The Remnants Of Us
by The Broken Watchman
Summary: When the world of Remnant fell to the world's dead, as corpses rose to kill the living, hunters were forced to become the hunted. Those who were once innocent children became cold killers. They all had to give up something to survive... but can some things be saved? Or are they simply lost forever? Ruby lost her humanity in this new, dark world... can she ever become human again?
1. A Rotting World

**Just a prestory A/N.**

**It's hard to read this nowadays, I started Remnants so long ago, and this is so rough in comparison to how I write now. Anyway, I just thought I'd throw this in. In many ways, I'm learning through trial and error in this story, and I'm taking my steps away from being a novice and towards acting as an intermediate writer. As you'll read along, know that it's people who left comments and gave me advice that allowed me to even get better in the first place. So please, always tell me if something bugs you or throws you off. It's one of the best ways to get better, is to hear what you're doing wrong. **

**Speaking of which, I just went back through and tried to get rid of my god awful habit where I'd jump from sentences to dialogue without making the appropriate change marks. I think I caught most of them, but if you see any I missed feel free to point them out. I got rid of that writing flaw by chapter nine, but I'm sure I missed a few between chapters one to eight. At around ten is where I started upping the chapter lengths, I found what I liked more than my usual four thousand word long chapter.**

**So if it's my writing's content that turns you off, I can't do much about that, although I do get somewhat brighter as the story goes on. But if it's my style and skill... I don't know, maybe stick around? I've gotten much better at writing since I started this story almost four months ago, and rereading these chapters... I almost find it hard to believe that I wrote them. Just something to think about, if you're on the fence after the first chapter.**

**Anyway, that's it, I'm gonna set you loose. I hope you enjoy!**

* * *

_Where do I begin? I haven't found clean paper to write out my thoughts on in months. And I hate writing in pen, I know the paper is going to look like a huge mess when I finish. But it was all I was able to find in this storeroom, along with some rusted push pins and a few stamps. I guess if I ever leave this for someone to read, I should start at the beginning..._

_I guess a name would be a good idea right? Kind of hard to say hello through paper, when we'll never actually meet..._

_But yeah, a name. Mine is Weiss Schnee. It doesn't matter if you recognize it or not, last names mean nothing now. I'm only a remnant of what the world once was anyways. I guess if you're reading this, and you want to say something too, you could sign your name at the bottom after mine._

_I don't know how you wouldn't know, but I feel like writing everything down from the beginning… I should explain how all this began._

_The world fell apart. Easy enough to say... but that leaves a lot out... I should be more descriptive than that._

_We fell apart... and to disease off all things. It's funny how we thought Grimm would be our undoing now... really, that was such a small problem in comparison. It came on so fast, the sickness that we all should have feared. Once the fever took off it took weeks to wipe us out..._

_But we weren't worried; how could it hurt us? After all, we made it ourselves. __As hunters slowly became unable to handle the Grimm menace, we turned to our scientists for an answer. We created a virus, born from an ant hunting fungus we had found in the western jungles, to kill off all the world's Grimms. We wanted to make ourselves safe from the threat that we were beginning to lose control over. When we saw nevermore falling from the sky, and beowolf packs lying dead in the forests, we celebrated for days on end! I was no better, and I cheered along with them all too, uncaring that I was going to be put out of my career. On a total fluke we had wiped out the sole risk to our existence since the day we first rose from dust ourselves. What we chose to do was a mistake. I think we all understand now that it is better to live with risk of a forest fire than to destroy every forest. We shouldn't have chosen to destroy every forest._

_It didn't take long, after we destroyed the Grimms. In the north, very close to where my family lived by coincidence, reports of some new strain of the Grimm hunting disease was reported to be infecting the locals. We swiftly tried to eradicate the disease, although not to the extent we should have. At first the strain was just labeled as some viral infection similar HIV or the H1N1 disease. It made life difficult for those who were infected, as they always felt angry and distressed, living in a foggy world where they didn't know who or what to rage against. Sometimes a person was only irrational, and sometimes a person was a… danger, both to themselves and to others. It wasn't treatable, at least we never found out if it was in the beginning, but we thought it was livable, manageable. So we quarantined and observed the infected. If we had known better, we would have put a bullet in every infected's head, and burned the very ground where the disease began. Because unfortunately all this area served as was a petri dish for something far worse to grow out of._

_The first true dead body was found somewhere near Balvian academy in the northern country of Atlas, a rival to my own school. At least, those are the rumors I've heard; information only travels by word of mouth now, and I've heard so many rumors that sometimes I just don't know what to believe. I do know the disease spread rampantly across all of Remnant, as spores were carried on the summer winds across the oceans to every one of the continents. Some people only needed to inhale a single spore, and it was all over for them. They would go insane, with rage and blood lust. On Ruby's twentieth birthday our celebrating was cut short when we hunters and huntresses were called in to stop the riots that were spreading uncontrollably across Atlas. All that did was get us infected as well. A body should drop from a blade or a bullet to the heart, but our enemies kept coming, rising off the ground when they should have been left immobile._

_I lost one of my best friends, who I had come to think of as a sister, in those riots. We weren't even able to get her body back from the monsters. Before we were able to stop them she had been torn into so many pieces. A finger here, a leg there, and chunks of hair ripped off and strewn here and there in every other direction._

_That came out wrong. It was devastating to watch, and I was glad that Ruby didn't see it. She had been around the corner helping other's evacuate the quarantine zone as the infected swarmed the scene._

_After that the three of us retreated, and we advised our comrades to do the same. We didn't wait for an order. If anyone had noticed our absence, we would have been expelled from what was left of the hunter organization for treason. We didn't care. As we returned to Vale the three of us cried over our fallen sister, and we called out curses on Ozpin, Ironwood and the like, damning the leaders who had sent us in unprepared and ill-informed._

_We returned to our home country just as the lights when out. It's amazing how little we valued things such as heating and electricity. And I'll admit it freely, as a spoiled brat for the majority of my life, I didn't take the changes well. I'm sure there were plenty of times when my two friends wanted to slap some sense into me, make me to understand that the lights just weren't coming back on. I held onto that hope for far too long, and I waited for close to a month before I had to understand that we weren't coming back from this. The world hadn't been crippled this badly even during the great war._

_Very little information spread at that point, but one thing we did notice on our own was that the virus somehow damped magical power. As we fought, we noticed how we no longer felt the strength of the world pulsing through our veins. I personally think it was because Grimms were creatures of magic themselves. The fungus first targeted the energy rich bodies of the black monsters, leaching off of their life force to survive. When it lost that energy source, it migrated to the only other creatures that could channel the world's energy… humans, and their faunas cousins. _

_That part is only my speculation though. Makes sense, but no way to prove that. I just know that I found out too late. I wasted my stores of energy before the world even fell apart, and lost the ability to make glyphs. I'm just as weak as any other human now. Ruby and Yang were smarter than I was, and preserved the energy in their bodies for their semblances, hoping they would one day save us if we were ever in a pinch._

_From there, the world fell into chaos, as martial law began to win out over governments who could no longer control the hordes of dead bodies that had once been their citizens. No one knew what to do, and as the spread of information died, so did hope. The world was ending; many of us thought it was the beginning of some kind of rapture, as the dead rose to consume the living. I was never religious, but even I sometimes wondered if this was some form of divine punishment. We probably deserved it._

_And the hunters and huntresses, we who were supposed to protect and sacrifice for the good of the people, who were supposed to be the beacons of light when the world fell into darkness... we chose the selfish option. We all saw firsthand how out-classed we were by our new enemies, our old friends and neighbors. Some stood and fought for longer than others, but in the end, we all ran. We hid from the world as it began to rot. One out of every ten hunters survived the panics that followed the world falling apart. I'd guess it was close to one in ten thousand for civilians. _

_You can hate me and the organization I belonged to for letting the world die, because all of this probably is our fault. If we had stayed and fought, maybe science would have found an answer before everything fell apart._

_And that's where the past for everyone ends. Now, if you're still interested, this is part forward is my story._

_Left with no one else in the world to look to or rely on Ruby, Yang, and I just began to roam aimlessly. We supported each other. We actually did well, those first two years. We didn't live well though. We stole, we swindled, we bullied. The monsters we once defended people against… that was what we became. More names that probably mean nothing to you, but after all we did, Cinder and Roman were saints compared to us._

_That was what it took to survive though. We were all harder people than we once were; we needed to be in order to continue on. But we were all the same too. I was still shrewd, Yang was still boisterous, Ruby was still kind. Maybe I'm being to harsh on myself. We weren't that bad, we helped people just as much as we hurt our enemies._

_ At least until we lost another._

_I blame her for it. We'd been hiding out in this small no name city, in an old factory building used to hold refugees who wanted to actually enter the main city. I told her over and over that things were different now in this lawless world, and we needed to look unappealing and unassuming if we wanted to avoid trouble. And whenever I said those things, Yang always just laughed and say I was paranoid. She didn't believe me, and continued to prance around like a flirt. I know she did it more as an act than anything else. Ruby still loved to see her sister be her sister, brash and bold as always._

_After what happened... I think it would have been better if she had just been turned._

_She left us in the middle of the night, saying she wanted to get out and stretch her legs. I offered to go with her, but she told me to guard her sister instead. Ruby had already fallen asleep. When she turned me down, I even offered her my knife, our only weapon, the only one small enough to conceal as we were searched before entering this choke point. She shrugged that off as well, saying she'd be fine. Yang wanted to go and make sure where we'd hidden our weapons hadn't been found. _

_I nearly woke up half of the people in the room. I told her point blank no, it was a stupid risk to wander out into the wilderness over something so frivolous; we couldn't do anything if someone had stolen our stuff anyway. I told Yang that I wanted her back with us in less than an hour, whether her legs were 'stretched' or not. _

_When she didn't show up in two, I knew something was wrong. I woke up Ruby to go find her._

_It didn't take us long; a crowd had already formed outside of the building, circling around a bloody figure left on the ground. We pushed through the circle, already knowing and dreading what we would find. Something broke inside of Ruby when she found Yang's body dumped against a wall that night, her clothes ripped and her throat slit. It was worse than Blake dying by far. At least when Blake died, we could say mindless animals had done it. It might be hard since you didn't know her, but Ruby was the forever kid, always hopeful and bright. She'd dedicated her life to helping people. How can someone like that come to terms with the fact that people are evil?_

_Screaming for blood, Ruby stood over the corpse, calling out for the person responsible to come forward. Of course on one did, and if anyone knew they weren't going to talk. Ruby didn't know who had done it, so she decided every man was equally guilty. I saw something snap in Ruby as we were all corralled back into the building for the night._

_Ruby tried to hide what she had done from me. The next morning she tried to drag me off towards the woods away from the front entrance, lying while saying she just couldn't stand to pass through where Yang died. I saw through her lie instantly, and I walked back towards the entrance, unsure of what I would find. I expected some vandalism, or maybe a few injured gatekeepers nursing their wounds._ _But when I walked through the doorway, ignoring the girl behind me who had actually started sobbing while begging me to stop, I realized I should have listened. _

_I never got Ruby to tell me how she did it, I can't even begin to imagine how. But at some point last night, after they all foolishly went back to sleep, unaware who they had crossed, the kind, caring girl who had always been so important to me... hung them all. She hung 19 bodies off of the tree in front of the old metal refinery in the dead of the night. Ruby used up the last of her semblance to catch them all in their sleep.__ So when Ruby failed to stop me, and as I laid eyes on their bodies swaying in the winter breeze, the message that had tried to make it through to me for two years finally made it._

**_The world had ended._**

_I didn't think that because of the virus, nor did I label it on human cruelty. I knew those were never going away. But in one night, the two things that I relied on to keep reality fair and just were stolen from me. I lost the older sister who I had relied on to keep my thoughts bright, and I lost the partner I relied on to keep my soul pure._

_ I knew that I was just as stained as Ruby was by the culling, because in a way I thought her actions were fitting. The majority of my thoughts were horrified by what Ruby had done, but my darker side could sympathize with her. If she had asked, I know I would have been tempted to help._

_It took an hour to hike far enough from the city to find a burial spot, just under a large oak where the ground hadn't frozen solid. I should have sent Ruby away and done everything myself, but Ruby said it was her responsibility as sister. We couldn't carry her properly; Yang's was still too heavy for our starving bodies to manage. So while I did carry our packs, weapons, and a shovel we had stolen from the warehouse, I... I also made Ruby piggyback her sister's corpse up the mountain. We didn't say anything as we dug the grave, and when we finished Ruby just laid Yang down deep in the earth, and slipped her sister's gauntlets_ _on Yang's now deathly pale arms for the last time. At some point Ruby stopped crying, even when I didn't. And as we filled in the grave and covered up the world's most golden locks, Ruby's eyes only got harder. As we turned to leave that awful place Ruby became a different person all together._

_I just can't believe that was four years ago. Ruby has been dead inside since, and I don't know if I can stay with her much longer. I just can't take this… silence. We don't talk anymore... after all we have seen and done together, what is there to say? The silence just leaves me feeling numb, and I don't know if I am any different to the clickers who we just dealt with less than an hour ago to clear out this building for the night. _

_I don't feel as though I'm living anymore... I'm just putting off my death._

* * *

'_I need to do something about these'_ .Weiss sat with her legs crossed against the cold wall of the storeroom that she was guarding, feeling the chill spread from the brick wall through her jacket and into her shoulder blades. Her partner was sleeping over in the corner, curled under a desk that Ruby had leaned up against a wall, so that she wasn't immediately visible. Ruby felt slightly safer out of sight, and she usually didn't okay a room for the night unless the red-head had some way to hide while she slept.

As she looked over at where her partner had hidden herself, Weiss held the few sheets of paper in her hand and contemplating over what she should do about them. And more importantly, what they meant to her.

Weiss had gotten used to the feeling of depression over the years of living in this new world, and had written the diary pages in one of her darker moments. _'__Still, six months ago I was upset with how things are going, and I can't say I'm any happier now'_. Sometimes she didn't even feel safe around Ruby anymore; her partner had become unhinged, giving up her humanity to not have to feel the pain of Yang's death any longer. Weiss knew the red-head would always protect her, but Ruby had at some point became disconnected with reality.

_'She definitely doesn't know when to quit.'_ Weiss smirked to herself, running a hand through her hair, contemplating cutting off her split ends herself or having Ruby do that. Weiss still cared enough about her appearance to fix her hair the second it started looking messy. '_I think I've made it perfectly clear that I'm getting too tired for all this...'_

Weiss jumped, as she suddenly heard a loud screeching noise from across the room. It was the table Ruby was under, as the girl underneath it shoved the thin plywood over her away from the wall. Not wasting any time, Weiss quickly folded up the papers and shoved them into a jacket pocket. _I'd rather not explain what I don't have to… it probably wouldn't go that well anyway._

Stretching her arms over her head and into the air, Ruby emerged from her hiding spot. Peering out of the side of her eye, Ruby just hummed a dull hello at the blonde across the room from her.

Weiss took in her partner, who had undergone some drastic changes over the past few years. Ruby had grown a few inches in the past seven years, and the extra height mad her appear drawn and thin, although pretty much everyone looked that way now with the scarcity of food. _'She's definitely lost the baby cheeks from all the sweets', _Weiss thought to herself idly.

The lack of body fat gave the redhead the appearance of a hawk, her face composed of only hard angles and sharp lines. Her clothes hung limply from her frame as she stretched, and her once short-cropped auburn hair now hung down past her shoulders, the roots still black and the tips their iconic red.

Weiss called up to Ruby, who was trying to get her neck to pop and was pulling on her head to the right with both her hands. "You need to get some new clothes, you're starting to look more haggard than usual."

Ruby only looked down at her clothing, dusting her front off with a swipe of her hand, and then shrugged as a response. A grey, unreadable t-shirt that had once been some video game promotion was under a denim jacket that Ruby had taken to wearing recently. And a belt was pulled tight around a pair of faded blue jeans, which were frayed and going thin at the knees. She wore black hiking boots, which were falling apart and had lost their concealed knife a long time ago.

Ruby was still recognizable though, closer than Weiss resembled her past self. Sure she had lost the baby fat that had clung to her cheeks because of all the sweets, but anyone they had ever met before would know Ruby Rose, even after all this time.

_'Except for one thing...' _What had really changed about Ruby in the last six years, the only thing that anyone who had known her before the world ended would notice… Ruby's eyes. Once large, bright and full of hope, they had now become beady and small, constantly accompanied by a mad glint accentuated by the dark bags always resting under the orbs. The pretty silver shade that had once glinted whenever the redhead smiled had grown dull over the years, closer resembling the water collected at the bottom of a pail or bucket. They were the eyes of a corpse.

"Let's get moving" Ruby mumbled as she rubbed away the dust that had accumulated in her eyes over the night. Ruby didn't need much sleep nowadays, 4 hours being more than enough for her to keep going. She usually took first watch so that they could leave early the next morning, so that she wouldn't have to wait for Weiss to wake up. Weiss had learned over the years not to tell Ruby to sleep more; she had received a lot of death glares from the red-head that were simply followed by a cold: "I know what I need."

As Weiss nodded and began to repack the few supplies they had taken out of their rucksacks, Ruby observed her partner, just as she knew Weiss had been doing to her only a moment before. The blonde was similarly dressed, and just as thin. It was something that the pair constantly argued over, but Ruby couldn't get Weiss to see sense and abandon old habits. She was so much easier to spot while she stayed dressed in all white, but anytime Ruby tried to get Weiss to wear something else she only received the response: "bite me!"

Weiss's demeanor was the change anyone else would have noticed before anything else. Ruby didn't see Weiss smile anymore, didn't see her eyes role in the true Weiss fashion. Ruby really missed the days when Weiss would call her 'dolt', 'dimwit', 'imbecilic', and the dozen of insults that had been meant as anything _but_ insults really. Sometimes when they talked to each other, Weiss didn't even feel like Weiss anymore. The once upon a time heiress walked with her head bowed and her shoulders hunched in, as if the weight of carrying on was just becoming too much to take. Maybe it had been for too long.

When they were both ready, the two readjusted their weapons and slowly moved the crate that they had used to block the door to the stockroom. They exited the room quietly, leaving behind nothing, so that no one would ever be able to tell that the room had been inhabited for the night. As Ruby lifted Weiss over a crumbling wall that they had vaulted over the night before to get into the apartment building, and then hefted herself up next to her partner, she began to miss the weight she used to keep strapped to her back. Ruby had been forced to abandon her scythe a long time ago; its bulk made it useless in the alley gunfights that the world had devolved to. She now had a hunting rifle slung over her shoulder, and kept a trench knife in her jacket pocket. Weiss had left her rapier behind as well, in favor of a pistol and a simple hunting knife; now that dust was almost impossible to find the one time heiress' weapon was no better than a razor sharp paperweight.

Climbing out of the building and hopping down from the second story balcony, Ruby and Weiss began to walk silently down the deserted street. They had arrived in this city three days ago, and had spent most of their time in the uptown, scouring rich apartments for supplies. Almost as large as the city surrounding Beacon, and definitely far more developed, the trade center had fallen apart a long time ago. It belonged to no one now. People had probably tried to reclaim the city in the past, but once clickers found their way in… they stayed.

As they walked down the street, sticking to the shadows as they went, Ruby kept on thinking she saw people watching them as they walked down the street from windows and side alleys. But every time she investigated, the dangers were always either figments of her imagination or just the hobbling bodies of infected. Nothing that posed a true threat to them. Still, the red head stayed sharp, and twitched at every motion she saw out of the corner of her eye.

_'I swear, one of these days, I'm going to die because I'll think I'm aiming a clicker, and it's going to be an actual person aiming back. Gonna be a dumb way to die, I don't want to go out like that.'__  
_

Ruby kept a firm grasp on her rifle's shoulder strap, ready take aim at the drop of a hat. Weiss on the other hand wasn't too worried, nothing could sneak up on them while they were in the open like this, as they walked down the large city street filled with undergrowth. While they walked on she became more relaxed, and soon Weiss was swinging her arms back and forth in large arcs like a bored child while she took in the landscape. Tall buildings leaned above them, some fifty to sixty stories high. Crumbled walls, slowly being taken back by nature, with ivy, moss and lichen grew up the sides of the buildings in snaking paths. It was amazing how quickly nature had taken back the city. Bushes and trees were everywhere, growing from the streets, sidewalk pavement, and even out of some of the sky-high windows in the buildings. Weiss found the sight beautiful, even if it was in an archaic, minimalist way.

The blonde took sight of a particularly beautiful willow that had somehow found the nutrients it needed to survive almost forty stories high. Weiss daydreamed on what it might be like to swing from the branches of the tree so far over the highway, the view that must have been visible from so high up in the sky. She even tried to squeeze out some magic, to try and reach the tree. At the height of her power Weiss could have easily launched herself that high. It was foolish to daydream on such silly ideas, but as she waked she put a slight spring in her step, hoping with every fiber of her being that she would suddenly feel the wind pass by her face as she rocketed into the air. All she got was a startle when she suddenly felt Ruby guiding her away from the sidewalk and into the street by a firm hand on her shoulder.

Looking back at their path, she saw that in their route had been a clicker, one who had laid itself down and was preparing to release spores. It was odd that one had chosen this sunny street to lay itself out on. Clickers tended to stay in dark, closely cramped spaces where they could hear their own echoes. Mushrooms grew from its body as it was coming closer to reaching the final point in its new, warped life cycle. While it could no longer walk, the monster could have very easily reached out and grabbed one of them as they walked by. Nothing could save you from the bite of a clicker… except for a bullet to the head.

_I wonder if that would actually make Ruby cry, if she had to kill me. I haven't seen her cry since Yang was with us... I wonder if I still matter enough to her to break that streak_.

Once the clicker was out of sight, Ruby turned to Weiss, who was starting to lag behind again. "So… do you have anywhere you want to go?" Ruby was getting just as tired as Weiss of wandering aimlessly, even if she didn't show it as much. Sure it was depressing living without purpose, but at least Weiss was living. That was really all that mattered in the red-head's mind.

Weiss replied back dryly :"Everywhere's the same". Fall was just beginning to turn over to winter, and a cool breeze breathed over their backs from the east. As she rubbed her arms, trying to use friction to warm them, Weiss sighed sadly. "Why are we still traveling Ruby? We could, I don't know, maybe find a place… try to make it livable…"

"Because…," Ruby began, and then in a deadpan voice quoted: "_I don't feel as though I'm living anymore. I'm just putting off my death._"

Weiss stopped dead in her tracks. "...You went through my stuff?" Weiss should have been mad, even if she wasn't; the blonde just couldn't believe Ruby had found it in her to care enough to do something like that.

"I got worried." Ruby response came back in a matter of fact tone, as though she was just commenting on something plain, like the weather in a sunday newspaper.

"Over?" Weiss hated asking Ruby to elaborate. Nowadays it felt as though she was pulling teeth from the redhead every time she wanted a simple answer.

The redhead's eyes closed a fraction of an inch, while mulling over in her head whether or not she should start this. Sighing heavily, Ruby planted her feet in the pavement while still looking forward. "I went through your bag last week when I saw you practicing on a noose…," Ruby huffed, half turning to look back at Weiss through the side of her eye. At the shocked expression from Weiss Ruby continued on. "Yeah, I was awake for that, although I didn't know how to bring it up." Apparently she still didn't, because Ruby only sighed loudly, running a hand through her hair as though it was a stress reliever. "Would you really want to settle down somewhere?"

Weiss though about that for a moment, and then sighed: "no… no, not really".

After a nod from Ruby, they just started walking again for another few minutes. It wasn't long though before Weiss stopped again. Ruby looked back, worried for a half a second at Weiss's sudden halt. But that worry slipped from her mind when she saw the look on the blonde's face. It was the blank look of when Weiss had gotten lost in her own thoughts. Looking off into the distance, watching their shadows curving and warping over the cracked blacktop and becoming unrecognizable, Weiss asked her partner a question that had been eating at the back of her mind for a while now. "Do you really think this is some kind of rapture Ruby?"

"Why do you ask?"

"You were the only one of us on the team who actually believed in god… you still wear that cross from your old combat uniform." After a second of silence, with a tension that made it feel as though Ruby had no intention of answering, Weiss added: "I still see you praying every now and then."

Ruby looked forward again, her hand caressing the silver cross that hung in the hollow of her throat. Looking up to the sky, she began to walk forward at a slower pace than before. "I… I don't know anymore. But if there is one, he has a really demented sense of humor."

Following behind, Weiss began walking a little faster so that she was walking next to Ruby again. "How so?"

"Isn't it odd that our world named Remnant would fall apart the way it did?" At a puzzled look from Weiss the redhead explained herself in more detail. "We could have all been wiped out by a plague… or there could have been some nuclear explosion that destroyed the planet. There could have been an asteroid, a rogue black hole, a gigantic volcanic eruption… hell, we could have even been destroyed by aliens. It would have made a better story at least." Ruby looked back at her partner, whose brow had furrowed trying to make sense of Ruby's musings. "Instead we're left with this… just a few of us left… trying to cling on to a wasted life, one which I personally think is unfair and a little too hard. Just a _**Remnant**_ of what humanity had once been."

That was a little too deep for Weiss, and she didn't know what to say. The blonde hadn't expected Ruby to have seriously though their predicament out that much. Ruby waited for a moment, wondering if Weiss had a differing opinion. It would at least be something worth talking about. When she didn't, Ruby closed back up again, and they both continued to walk in silence again for the next few hours.

* * *

As they walked through the city's downtown they took a detour from their planned route every once in a while to loot the odd store as they passed. Most food stores were gone at this point, but once in a while the two got lucky and stumbled across old cans or some preservatives. Ducking into a rundown convenience store, the pair found enough that morning to consider it a good haul, even though it was only a can of soup and a package of old almonds. In a window sill facing the rising sun they had also found a can of tomato sauce, but the tin's sides were bloated, and Ruby remembered from a long time ago not to trust any packaging that was deformed.

Getting to work on the soup can, cutting a hole in the lid with her knife, Ruby looked up to see Weiss rolling the tomato sauce can between her hands thoughtfully."Weiss, we aren't touching it, and that's final."

Grumbling angrily, Weiss dropped the can from her hands and kicked it across the floor of the shop they were standing in. "I know, I know... I'm just tired of being hungry..."

"No shit Weiss. Of course you are, so am I." Sawing around the edges of the can with her knife, until the entire lid was off, Ruby finished opening the can of soup. "But I'd rather be starved than dead." Peering down into the tin, Ruby groaned to herself when she saw the brown liquid in the can. "...Had to be onion, huh? Nastiest soup there is..."

The soup was foul, and the nuts crumbled into sand as soon as they hit the moisture in their mouths. Still, the meal would hold them over until tomorrow, and anything else they found for the rest of the day would be extra.

The two didn't waste their time on clothing or electronic stores, even though Ruby seriously needed to pick up a new pair of jeans somewhere. If any more of the fabric wore out she would begin to develop holes around the knees, which would lead to unnecessary injuries. But that was a detour they didn't need to make yet, and every time they entered a store Ruby considered it a risk on their lives. She did duck into a few shoe stores to check for a new pair of boots though, even if she was unsuccessful.

Weiss had been against it in the beginning, but a fair amount of what they looted came from dead bodies. The two would collect the ammo and clothing stored on the packs of those who died and weren't completely picked over by the time Ruby and Weiss found the corpse. As Ruby ripped the pack off of a rotting corpse, a woman who had probably only died a few weeks ago (and was still somewhat fresh by this worlds standards), Weiss listened with her back turned to the whole process. Ruby could be rough with dead bodies, and Weiss felt it was a little disrespectful to mutilate the corpses of those less fortunate. It bothered her to think that someday somebody might do that to their corpse's; just rip her arms off in hopes of finding a spare bullet. After searching for a minute, Ruby exhaled and sighed while throwing the bag back onto the woman's now mangled body. "Nothing."

Weiss could have just left it at that, she knew what Ruby was going to do if the redhead actually opened her eyes and noticed more than what she was looking for. Still, Ruby did need them more than the corpse did. "I don't think so," Weiss commented dryly over Ruby's shoulder, pointing down at the corpse's lower half. Looking down the redhead saw the dead women's feet, which were covered by a relatively new pair of beige hiking boots. They looked to be around Ruby's size.

Squatting down by the corpse's feet while pulling out her knife, Ruby quipped happily back to Weiss."You're a life saver Schnee."

And without another remark, Ruby began to cut at the woman's lower calves wildly, freeing the shoes from their rotting owner. Luckily the feet hadn't begun to rot yet, protected from the elements by the hard leather, and the shoes only stunk of rotting wood and mud. Ruby wasn't too keen on smelling like a corpse, although she would bear the stench if it was the practical approach.

Now walking along in new, beige boots, Ruby and Weiss continued on like this through the entire day, alternating between who was the looter and who was the watchman. The phrase "whistle while you work" wouldn't have applied to what they were doing. It was grisly business, and even though Ruby took it lightly, they were both serious about the job at hand.

Weiss thought to herself bitterly while she was looking through an old butcher shop. She could hear Ruby humming lightly to herself out front, as the redhead lean against the brick walls at the front of the building. _Oh yeah, this is just some Sunday business trip for you Ruby, isn't it?_

When dusk began to approach they decided to stop to find a place to rest for the night on the outskirts of the city. Neither the infected nor the clickers could see in the dark any better than the pair could, but it still wasn't safe to stay out in the open where they could be stumbled upon. The two would probably stay and continue searching through the city for the rest of the week, until they stopped finding enough food to survive off of and were forced to move on. Weiss had found an old bank, and once the two women cleared the premises Ruby was feeling pretty happy with their hideout for the night.

After Ruby checked out the bank vault and marked the spot as a terrible idea for the night (the red head found the idea of dying from suffocating inside of an airtight room unappealing), she walked through the main hall of the bank again starting to worry that maybe their marble stronghold wouldn't actually be the fortress the pair thought it could be. Taking in her surroundings again, shining a small hand wound flashlight on the walls, Ruby began taking in the graffiti. There had been no light for any plant matter to grow over the past six years, so the dozens of messages screaming things such as 'the end is neigh' and 'god has abandoned us' were still well-preserved. Ruby furrowed her brow as she read the walls, finding some sense of vindication at the whiny complaints. '_Seems like a waste of ink to me; anyone alive to read that would already be well aware'_.

Someone, obviously talented with a can of spray paint, had left an after image of an ATM that had been ripped out of the ground some time ago. The idea of someone laboring to get the money out of the machine seemed funny to Ruby; money lost all of its worth almost instantly when martial law took over, so whoever went through all the trouble probably didn't get much out of their hard work.

Suddenly Ruby heard Weiss call from the back, leaning around a corner and shining her own light at her partner."Hey! I found a nice place for the night." After a couple of seconds, where Ruby just stood silently, Weiss raised an eyebrow at the brunette. "You coming?"

"Yeah… nothing anywhere else anyway…," Ruby mumbled as she trudged over to Weiss.

Weiss had actually found a decent place to hole up in. It was some manager's office, which had escaped the fall and the riots without ever being ransacked. There were no windows, a solid ceiling with no panels, and plenty of furniture to shift around to barricade the door. In short, it was perfect by Ruby's standards. Weiss sat with her back against the wall opposite the door while she watched Ruby push two heavy filing cabinets into place, struggling to move them quietly on her own. Usually she would help, but Weiss was feeling somewhat vindictive, and was perfectly fine with Ruby being the only one to put in the effort into barricading the door.

Dusting off her hands, Ruby turned to Weiss with the shadow of a smile on her face. "So how long do you want to sleep for?"

Weiss just shrugged her shoulders and answered her bluntly. "Just wake me when you start feeling tired."

Ruby only nodded, not hurt in the slightest by Weiss's cutting answer. Leaning against the door, and then sliding down to reach its base, Ruby reached into her pocket and began to play with a Rubik's cube she had found earlier in the day.

Weiss would have just fallen asleep at that point, but something had been chewing away at the back of her mind all day. "Were you really that bothered when you thought I might…?" Weiss wasn't able to voice the end of her question. She just raised her fist behind her head, and made the motion of someone hanging themselves.

Ruby absentmindedly nodded her head. "Rope is an extremely useful tool. I'd keep some around if I wasn't afraid you'd be tempted."

* * *

**_"Those who fight monsters should see to it that in the process they do not become monsters themselves.  
_****_For if you gaze long enough into the abyss, the abyss will also gaze back into you."_**

**_~Friedrich Nietzsche_**

* * *

**So, first authors note. I hope you'll go forward, tell me what you think about the story. Just as an off hand topic, the zombies in this story are based off the fungi corticep- zombies in "The Last Of Us." It's also where the name of the story comes from. But I was thinking about it, and zombies are zombies, and they're all really the same. And besides, it's not the zombies that are ever the danger in an apocalypse... it's the people who you run into, who've become worse than the zombies. That's what the story embodies, and hopefully, that's what you'll see as Ruby slowly becomes more and more human. Just know that infected are fast, angry rage type zombies who can see, and that clickers are more like the slow, Romero style zombies, are blind and use echo location to find their prey. Also, infected can't infect, while clickers can.**

**So, favorite and follow, they mean a lot. And also, tell me what you think, I love reading comments and responding, getting to hear what different people take away from the story.**

**Anyway, thanks, and I'll see you all soon!**


	2. Red Wine

_Now that we're in an actual city, I'm finding myself with access to things like paper again. It's been nine months since I last wrote anything. I think. _

_Yeah, it's been nine months, I just checked a calendar. Things have changed since then, but I wouldn't say that those changes have been for the better._

_I don't know when, I found out three months ago, but at some point Ruby read my last diary entry. She called me out on what was in it. About the very last part. I should have been mad, but I thought that maybe… when she heard how unhappy I was… that she might try to be, I don't know, different. More like my old Ruby. But she didn't take it that way. _

_Instead, she decided that my note just signaled we needed a change of pace._

_It's the dead of winter now, and even though it's been mild this year, it's also been far too long. We're three months in, and I don't see it getting any warmer anytime soon. Winter always brings more death. Food shortages, unstable settlements, dangerous starving psychopaths roaming the streets and roads, desperate for supplies. We all kill more in the winter. We're all on edge when we're already half frozen._

_ Usually Ruby and I travel north this time of year, towards the equator, trying to get a little closer to the sun's warmth and the oceans But this isn't an idea for just us. All of us wanderers do this, and it brings thousands of humans, all itching to fight, closer together._

_Ruby decided that instead of just hiding like we usually do during these months, we should use the winter's chaos to our advantage. We traveled to Caric, one of the hand full of actually functioning cities on this continent, and we found those in charge of the underground. I thought we were just going on a raid when we entered the back alley warehouse. We'd done it before. Locate a storehouse, sneak in, steal as much as we can, and then fight our way out. __It worked well in the past, minus the one time Ruby got shot in the leg and we were forced to lay low for a few solid weeks while it healed. But when Ruby stood in front of the guy in charge, she instead made an application. Our names were well-known in this part of the rotting heap of a world, and she wanted a roof over our heads in exchange for our service._

_It was horrifying. I'd seen her do it before, but usually she at least looked conflicted over what she was about to do. The head honcho, Bradley, told us 'I'd be more than happy to employee you both, the two famous berserkers. But unfortunately we have no room for you now. I'm fully staffed at this **particular** moment, but I'd have no reason to not hire you if I did have the room'. _

_Ruby understood what he was implying before anyone else did. She had always been a quick thinker. Before anyone else caught his double meaning, Ruby walked over to the corner where two gambling men weren't paying close attention, and held a gun to the back of the dealer's head. She executed them both, one shot in the back of the head, the other through the eye. She shot them with my gun, and then gave it back to me as though nothing had happened._

_The two men she killed, who I found out later were Bradley's lieutenants, were both tasked with enforcing Bradley's control over the city. I guess we took that job when Ruby took their lives. Bradley wasn't even mad; he found Ruby's open display of violence interesting. No, interesting isn't strong enough of a word. Intoxicating? Yeah, intoxicating is the word I'm looking for. We've put our lives in the hands of a drunk. What sane leader is okay with his two main men are just slaughtered in cold blood?! But that only meant that when someone else better than us comes along… well, he'll probably want a really good show when that day comes along, maybe give the two to replace us the jump on us or something._

_We've been doing odd jobs for Bradley. A vandalism here, a menacing threat there. I tend to handle the former, and I leave Ruby to do the latter. We work together on all of the projects, but Ruby always finds petty vandalism boring, and pushes those jobs off on me. And I'll admit it, I'm not intimidating in the slightest when I'm standing next to Ruby. She just oozes menacing vibes lately, and it's easy to see she's got a screw or two loose._

_I hate it. I'm no petty criminal. I shouldn't need to go around busting knee caps and holding people up at knife point, telling them to get off our turf. It sound's childish, but I'd say life at the moment is pretty shitty._

_The worst thing though, that makes every part of this worse? Ruby thinks she did that for me. _

_Somewhere, in her twisted mind, she thinks I would want this!? She didn't get rid of the silence! She only replaced it with senseless violence! And over what?! We kill people, who have loved ones and families just like me, over mere inches of territory! Back alleys, side streets. Little things, all of which mean nothing in the grand scheme to anyone! All of our fighting is just a pissing contest between Bradley and the other kingpins, and I'm sure they don't give a shit over the lives their ending! I don't want to live if it means I'm making other people die!_

_I'm not going to keep doing this for much longer. I'll give her one week, and either she'll be able to see my sadness, or I'm leaving her behind. I can't hold out on her changing back forever. She's not the same any more. Maybe Ruby can live like this, but I just can't anymore._

* * *

Ruby leaned around the corner of the warehouse wall, waving to get her friend's attention. Slapping the wall of Weiss's room lightly, seeing her partner's head jerk up as her train of thought was broken, the redhead called out to her partner. "Weiss, we gotta go." She then backed out of the blonde's room, leaving her to deal with anything she needed to before she left.

Nodding absentmindedly, Weiss stood up and began shuffling towards the door Ruby had disappeared through, twisting her neck and hearing it pop twice as she loosened her stiff muscles. Weiss had just been sitting on her cot, fully clothed in her pure white winter gear, staring off into space at one of the warehouse walls. She did that a lot lately.

The infamous duo had received the best sleeping quarters besides Bradley himself when they took his right and left hand men's positions, inside of the interior warehouse. Their rooms used to be two side by side offices, whose interior call center equipment had been ripped out and replaced with the furnishings of an apartment bedroom. It was actually warm here, and they both were able to sleep through the full night without taking watches for once.

While Weiss hated everything else that went on here, she had fallen in love with that small treat. The blonde couldn't remember the last time she had been able to sleep through the night uninterrupted.

While Weiss couldn't be sure, she suspected that Ruby wasn't advantage of the opportunity. The dark bags under the redhead's eyes told Weiss that her partner was still sleeping very little.

Ruby had casually leaned against the outside door frame, and hummed lightly as Weiss strode past her. "Bradley's given us a job for the day." Weiss only shrugged as she turned down the corridor leading to the central part of the building, already dreading the day's events. '_So who are we going to have to rough up today? Are we going to beat some people senseless for absolutely no reason again?'_

As they weaved through the warehouse and into the back alley that connected to Bradley's stronghold, Ruby gave off a visible shiver as she stepped into the cold snow-paved alley. Ruby was always a bit more edgy this time of year; the red-head really hated the cold and the sharp, painful, needly tingle it left in her fingers. If they could find a doctor he would probably have said Ruby had bad circulation in her hands... but neither of the two had had the luck to run into one in the last seven years. Hopping up and down, trying to work out the cold, Ruby rubbed her hands together as she turned to Weiss. "Let's get out of this alley and into the sunlight."

Weiss followed behind Ruby, and as they left the back alley and walked down the streets leading to today's job they both listened to the dozens of cat calls they received from the random passersbyers. Weiss couldn't care less about the idiots, she knew they were just being stupid. To the blonde, there was actually something amusing about their obvious desperation; she thought their hasty attempts at flirting from across the street were almost pitiful. And she would have been lying if she said that she didn't enjoy the attention on some level. She still enjoyed having her ego inflated, even if she knew the bars for earning complements had dropped conciderably.

Ruby didn't have that sense of humor though. She'd shoot anyone who even attempted to make a move on them a heart stopping glare, one that pretty much silenced any person with even a single shred of sense. Those who didn't quickly learned from their mistake. Ruby still didn't trust men after what had happened to Yang; she probably never would, and had smashed a lot of noses over the years when a suitor got closer than Ruby found acceptable. The distance varied with her mood; sometimes being less than a foot, and sometimes Ruby would stalk all the way down a street to deal with a particularly annoying heckler.

When Ruby took a turn away from their usual path through the snow-covered streets, Weiss sighed loudly, grabbing the redhead's attention. "So, what are we doing today?"

Ruby answered her bluntly, although it sounded somewhat rehearsed. "Bradley wants us to send a message to someone on east end. Sent us to clear the place out."

"Do we have to?" Weiss complained, uneager to have to end any more lives.

"**We** aren't doing anything; it's a one person job. You're just here as a look out; I just need you to look pretty and make me feel a little safer."

"But why are we even doing this Ruby? We could just leave the city now… winter is over." That last part wasn't true yet; it was still cold enough out that the two could see their breath leaving the scarves in front of their faces. But unless the universe had decided to send everyone into an unexpected ice age, winter would have to be over within the next few weeks.

"Bradley is giving us a box of ammo each, some sign of good faith I guess, when we finish this job. It's last thing we need to make it through the spring… once we get those…" Ruby then shrugged her shoulders and finished nonchalantly: "We get those, and then we're leaving."

Weiss was stunned by Ruby's statement. She had never even gotten the slightest whiff of Ruby wanting to move on. It was day four of the seven days she had given Ruby to pack up and leave. A little more than suspicious at the coincidence, Weiss snapped "have you been going through my stuff recently?"

"Hmph, nope… should I still be?" Ruby couldn't watch Weiss as closely as before, now that they both had separate quarters and full schedules. It wasn't a secret to the town that Weiss was on the suicidal side, as if to balance out her partner's psychotic sadistic streak. Ruby tried to watch over her as best she could, but there wasn't much to stop Weiss from disappearing for few hours to make a noose or find a razor in a city this large.

It was something Ruby constantly worried about every day, and one of the main contributors to her lack of sleep. The redhead made a point to always be up before and go to bed after Weiss. If the blonde was ever going to do something, that would probably be the time she'd try.

"No you shouldn't! I'm just... a little surprised by your sudden change in tone. What made you change your mind?"

Walking across the cracked sidewalk, Ruby suddenly froze when she looked at how meticulously someone had scraped the snow into a knee-high wall bordering the walkway. Sneering at the snow while speaking to Weiss, Ruby muttered to the woman next to her so low Weiss had to strain to hear it.

"You're obviously not happy… and personally, I would rather not keep pushing my luck. Bradley thinks we're a pair of god damn miracle workers, and I know he's going to ask us for something we just can't pull off sooner or later. He's not going to take it well when I say no". Swinging her leg, Ruby let her boot tip rip through and ruin the perfect snow bank someone had obviously spent a lot of time making earlier in the morning. Apparently the idea of someone wasting time on something so frivolous was frustrating to the redhead. After a second, third, and fourth kick, the section of the wall they were standing by looked more like a lumpy hill than the perfectly groomed snow bank it had been sculpted into only a moment before.

Looking back at Weiss once she was satisfied with her work, Ruby saw the annoyed and suspicious look on Weiss's face. Holding her hand's palm up to Weiss, Ruby commented dryly: "Neither one of us is getting what we want out of this arrangement, so I don't see any point in trying to keep it up."

"Alright… are we just going to disappear?"

"I'm still working on that part… anyway, we're here." Ruby waved her hand to signal the discussion was over, and slid her hand into her coat pocket, wrapping her fingers around the wooden grip of the snub pistol she had been loaned a few months earlier. That was the only reason Ruby wasn't wearing gloves. Other than thick wool mittens, Ruby couldn't find anything that actually blocked out the cold well enough for her hands to stop that would leave her unable to hold a gun, or her own knife for that matter.

It took a lot of paying off for Bradley to be able to sneak a firearm this deep into the city, and he'd be pretty upset if Ruby ended up losing it. Firearms were prohibited inside of the inner districts of the city, and Bradley didn't have many this deep. It was supposed to be a sign of trust… Bradley didn't want to lose the pair's loyalty, as they're names were well known all across the western half of this continent. Saying he had the two ex-huntresses roaming the streets was like saying he had an oiled up, fully operational tank patrolling the city.

As Weiss took in where they were walking, she saw the old, rusty building that doubled as a bootleg alcohol distillery. And Weiss actually knew who they were walking towards.

Trying to grab the redhead's coat, her fingers slipping on the slick nylon material, Weiss tried to stop Ruby. "Ruby!" The heiress hissed to the redhead walking ahead of her in a feverish whisper, trying to convey her sense of reluctance and dread. "This is… this is suicide! This isn't a one person job; it's a ten or twenty person assault! This is Diego's territory now, we lost it last month!"

Without stopping or slowing down, Ruby spoke over her shoulder to Weiss in a level tone. "Yeah, I told Bradley that as well. _But apparently_ he and Diego are meeting somewhere on neutral turf to talk things out right about now. Tensions are high, and I guess they don't want to get into another gang war. At least that's what Diego thinks… if this doesn't prove Bradley still doesn't want Diego's head on a pike, I don't know what would. So Bradley's betting on most of Diego's goons being away; he'll probably want to intimidate us with how many more people they have."

Weiss hissed: "So what if most of their people are away!? Diego is no fool! He probably left like ten guys behind!"

Pointing across the street, Ruby growled at Weiss, who was starting to get on Ruby's nerves. "Just watch for any damn reinforcements from that building over there! I'll give a signal when I've cleared them all out".

Putting her hands on her hips, Weiss mocked Ruby angrily. "Oh! I see! Perfect plan Ruby, perfect plan!" Stopping for one second for dramatic effect, Weiss then added: "Just one quick little question though? What the fuck am I supposed to do if there _are_ reinforcements huh?!"

Throwing her hands up in the air as she walked away, Ruby grumbled "I don't know Weiss! Be creative! I'm sure you'll figure something out!"

* * *

Reluctantly, hurling a steady stream of curses at her partner under her breath as she pulled herself over the iron fence and up to the balcony, Weiss did what she was told. Crouching against a brick wall to protect herself from the most of the winds bite, she was now watching over the street from the balcony terrace across the stronghold. Watching as Ruby approached, Weiss was just as impressed as always by how nonchalantly Ruby walked towards what could very well be her death.

Ruby loped gracefully up to the building through the snow, which had one lone guard sitting on an overturned barrel in front of the rusty warehouse doors. The man didn't take any notice to Ruby's approach while he watched the tongues of flame dancing upwards from a trash can fire he was using to keep warm. Weiss guessed that Ruby would try to slip by the man and keep on moving forward into the factory. Instead she was instead when her partner waked up to him calmly and tapped on his shoulder. The guard made the mistake of looking up, and a flash of silver flew by as Ruby's knife slashed across the man's throat. Even from this distance Weiss could see the spray of red that trailed behind the arc of Ruby's knife. He grabbed at his throat, futily trying to stop the bleeding while he silently thrashed on the ground. Before he even came to understand what was going on he had gone still.

Ruby wasted no time, and heaved up the corpse under it armpits, careful not to let the man leak blood onto her jacket. She dragged his body around the side of the building, being extremely careful to not have his ruined throat dribble red all over the path. Weiss had known this Ruby for so long, she could almost hear the redhead's logic in her mind. _'If I had let him live, he might have ran for reinforcements. I had to kill him or he would have caused problems for Weiss and I. And if someone saw his body they might do the same.'_

Ruby then walked back to the front of the building, and kicked fresh snow over the scarlet patch where a man had been only moments before. Weiss saw Ruby cast a glance back at the two deep tracks where the corpse's legs had dug into the snow. But nothing could be done about those though; at least they weren't immediately suspicious. Ruby, now carrying her pistol in hand, slowly moved into the building through the door that her victim had been stationed outside.

The minutes of waiting were excruciatingly long, and as Weiss listened for anything that could give a hint to if Ruby was safe or not, she began to wonder what she would do if Ruby did actually die. Weiss couldn't do anything to help her now if things went south; she had only brought her hunting knife with her for the 'trip'. Ruby's life was extremely important to her, but in the end it just couldn't more important than her own. _I guess… I guess I would travel southwest maybe, back across the plains. Most of the trees would be bearing fruit about now, and I doubt many people would want to wander the wilderness in this weather. I'm better in the cold than most… I could make it. It would be somewhat safe at least. From there… I guess I would-_

Weiss would have kept on going, but she snapped out of her thought process by the sound of gunfire. It was barely audible as it resonated from deep within the storage facility, but the noise was still unmistakable. Bullets were precious; they were pretty much your only connection to life while you were in a pinch, so someone wasn't just firing off a few rounds for fun. Someone was really trying to kill somebody else. After the six shots Weiss heard, all that was audible afterwards was total piercing silence, and Weiss strained to hear anything else through the wind that had begun to whistle across the street. It felt as though her heart was in her throat, and as she felt the blood pounding in her ears, the blonde had a hard time swallowing.

_I wonder if I actually meant-_

Weiss sighed in relief when she heard a faint, piercing melody from across the street. A whistle the two had made up years ago, it was only four simple notes. Just two short tweets followed by two long, deep trills. When Ruby had made it up she joked darkly: "For the living who don't need mourned, and the dead who should be remembered". So Ruby was fine.

Weiss jumped down from the terrace, bending her knee's as soon as she landed to absorb the majority of the impact, and quickly ran across the street. With her hunting knife drawn Weiss slipped through the doorway, eager to find Ruby and leave. Ruby had probably thrown caution to the wind and started looting, scrounging up ammo and food from the premises. She probably hadn't even stopped to consider that there might have been more men nearby, men who ran for reinforcements as soon as they heard gunshots instead of standing and fighting the redhead.

As Weiss ran down a long hallway, she almost tripped over two dead bodies lying just behind a corner in a turn in the hall. Both of the two had received deep puncture wounds to the neck. Stepping gingerly over the corpses, respectfully nodding to the two dead men, she continued down the hallway at a lighter pace. Entering a large, open room with a tanker taller than herself and her partner combined against one wall, she found Ruby leaning against the wall next to the hallway entrance. Ruby just grunted at Weiss when the blonde strode past her, craning her neck while cradling her left arm in front of her face. She gingerly pulling at her jacket's fabric, which now had a red splotch slowly growing over her upper left arm.

"Get hit?"

"Yep. Gave the two dumbasses over there a chance to surrender after they saw me kill that one over there. They were the only ones left." Ruby then jerked her head in the direction of a pair of corpses over in the corner. Only one set of legs were visible from behind the box they had taken cover behind, although there were two chest high blood splatters on the walls behind the boxes. "Tall one decided to fire on me instead".

Casting a glance around, counting six bodies, Weiss asked: "How many were there?"

"Nine. I'm guessing you already saw the two in the hall, there's one in that office over there, and finally the six out here in this open area" Ruby answered. Chuckling darkly to herself, Ruby gave Weiss a sheepish look. "Well, actually ten. I almost forgot about the guy outside".

"Hmm…," was Weiss's only response. She didn't like a chuckle being Ruby's response to an ended life. "Well, let's go… you're not going to bleed out any time soon, and we can patch you up when we get back."

"We aren't done yet." Muttering to herself, Ruby leaned down and ripped a scrap of cloth from one of her fallen foes. Wrapping it around her upper arm, she pulled one end with her right fist, using her teeth to hold the other end of the strip tightly in place. She gave out a small groan while she tightened the bandage, and then began to walk over to the large vat off against the warehouses wall. Ruby had been shot before; the pain was nothing new to her.

Taking two steps up a small ladder, Ruby unhooked a latch and lifted the lid off of the industrial sized vat, peering down into its murky contents. Ruby had never liked the tastes or the effects of booze, either before or after the end of the world. Who wanted to stumble around, loud and noisy, having the time of your life, and then not remember any of it the next day? And with the horrible headache to boot, Ruby couldn't remember a single positive quality about any of her drunken experiences with the rest of the group. Well, other than hearing some funny stories from the rest of the team. Even those had usually been at the redheads own expense, being that Ruby had possessed almost zero tolerance for liquor. Weiss on the other hand enjoyed the sense of release and euphoria alcohol had given her, and remembered her few experiences with the colorful cocktails she had enjoyed in her youth with her friends fondly. But she also understood how dangerous a foggy mind was in this world now, and abstained from it for that reason alone.

But to others though… a keg of beer was worth a box of ammo, maybe even the rifle along with the bullets as well. And by the looks of it, Diego had succeeded in making enough alcohol to fill an armory.

"Bradley told me to do this, although I find it a bit excessive. It'll definitely be sure to ruin Diego's day though." Ruby walked over to one of the bodies on the floor, the closest one to her, and began hefting it up over her shoulder. Once she got the corpse, who the red head had stabbed in the back before anyone had noticed her approach, over her good shoulder, Ruby walked back over to the vat and tried to lift the body over the lip of the container and into the basin. She ended up sliding the heavy body up the side of the tanker.

Weiss, who had gone slightly green at the thought of Ruby's actions, would have let her partner continue on if she hadn't seen the bodies face. It wasn't some hardened, bearded face of most of the men in this world. It was the face of a child, with a pencil thin mustache and a wispy under-beard. He couldn't have been older than seventeen.

Weiss called out solemnly as Ruby prepared to let him go into the vat."Not him"

Ruby pulled him back down, not even stopping to question why Weiss had singled out the body. To Ruby, that was all they were. Bodies. _Whatever Weiss, I've got more bodies... _She grabbed another one after she unceremoniously dropped the kid's corpse next to the vat, and swung the replacement in before Weiss could find something worth mourning about in this one as well. A sloshing sound could be heard from the basin as the body fell in, and a spray of foam leapt into the air, similar to the splash someone saw when a large rock was thrown into a lake.

As Ruby slammed shut the lid on the basin and redid the clasp, whistling to herself while she did so, Weiss asked in a shaky tone "how can you be so okay with this?" Looking around, distraught, Weiss continued on. "These people, they weren't bad people. At least, we can't know if they were. They were just… they were just… they just were on a different side than we were. Some of these people were children, or probably had children."

In the dead tone Ruby used to block out pain she responded "I'm more interested in _what_ a person represents than _who_ that person actually is."

Weiss couldn't take that dead voice from her friend anymore. All it did was mock the old Ruby, the one who had laughed and cried freely when the world threw challenges her way. The one who had once been the most important person in Weiss's life. She still was, although not in the same way. Angrily the blonde yelled: "STOP GIVING ME YOUR STUPID FUCKING RIDDLES! JUST GIVE ME AN HONEST-TO-GOD STRAIGHT FUCKING ANSWER FOR ONCE!"

After a moment of silence, which Ruby just spent staring at Weiss unashamedly, the heiress turned on her heel and began to stalk out of the factory. "Fuck you Ruby…"

She would have kept on going, but the blonde heard a sad mumble behind her. Weiss stopped, looking back at her partner. Through hard eyes Ruby stared at Weiss and began whispering sadly. "You're right. Some of these people were children. They probably weren't bad, and they most likely did have families relying on them to provide…" Shaking her head slowly, Ruby continued on with what she had to say, defending her own choices as much as she was explaining for Weiss.

"But where you see a kid, one who had a family who needed him, or had a girl who depended on him… all I can see is a guard. An _armed_ guard. A guard who would have killed you without a second thought, if that was what it took to survive and protect his loved ones. I can't blame him for it… because I'm doing the same thing. I'm playing the same game. To me, we are… no, we _were_ both fair fighters, equals in our competition for survival. He only lost to me in a fair fight…"

And with that, Ruby strode past Weiss and out of the factory, unable to bear the troubled and saddened look she was getting from her partner any longer.

* * *

"You girls are golden!" Eyeing his two most valuable weapons as he strode back and forth in front of them, Bradley couldn't help but grin wildly. He took a swig from a bottle of whisky that he had been enjoying, and then hollered loudly "I can't believe you even went through with… well, with the thing with the tanker. And I thought today couldn't go any better!"

Weiss found it gross how he could continue drinking liquor while listening to their… well really it was just Ruby's report. Weiss didn't really have much to contribute. He had already been drinking before they got back, and Weiss found it repulsive watching the man calling the shots stumbling around his throne drunkenly.

Bradley was in his mid-forties, already going grey and wrinkled from constant stress. He wasn't fat, but he definitely hadn't experienced the hunger most survivors had in the recent months. Bradley wasn't a leader; he was just charismatic enough to get people to follow him. That, paired with a few lucky calls, were really the only reasons he was in charge. Ruby and Weiss were both natural leaders in their own rights, and could have led these people better, even if they didn't want to. A stoned Weiss would have probably been better at calling the shots than a sober Bradley any day. And Ruby had already influenced Bradley several times, tempering his rage so that he wouldn't do something stupid enough to destroy everything, including Weiss.

"Of course, I have you to thank, little missy…" Bradley began leaning down as if to caress Ruby's face. Ruby caught his hand and twisted it so roughly that Bradley was forced to turn around, and shoved the drunk away.

"Bradley, while I am fond of you," Ruby lied, "try to touch either one of us again and I'll take your hand off."

Bradley just chuckled at Ruby's threat, obviously not taking her seriously as he should have. "You shouldn't worry; you aren't much of a match to my particular tastes anyway. Prefer them a little more… exotic. You're both a tad too plain."

"You're drunk" Ruby was getting frustrated and more than little panicked at how long this was taking. Ruby didn't want to stick around for long; she knew that Diego would be mounting an assault as soon as he got word of how he'd been backstabbed so quickly. "Anyways, deals a deal. Where's our reward?"

Bradley just jerked his head over to a drawer off by the wall, already beginning to walk off, humming to himself while cradling his stupid booze. He thought he had nothing to worry, that his people would be there to protect him when Diego came knocking. It would be a cruel slap from reality when he found out his two best fighters had disappeared in the night.

Opening the cabinet Ruby found her prizes, and tucked the two boxes under her good arm while turning back to Weiss. "Alright, let's go… uh, hang out I guess." While nobody was around, it probably wasn't the best idea to just announce to the world their preparation to bail on the gang. Weiss shrugged her shoulders and turned, walking back to her room.

* * *

"So… how long do you think it will be before they realize we're gone?" Weiss looked back over her shoulder at Caric, and as its skyline receded into the distance she didn't feel any sense of sadness while leaving the city behind. Weiss would be totally fine with putting these last three months behind her, and forgetting the experience all together.

Ruby's only answer was: "...Won't matter, we'll be long gone by then." Ruby was actually just thankful that they were able to get out of the city without a hitch. "What I wouldn't give to be there when Bradley hears how we've screwed him over though." With a laugh Ruby commented dryly: "That will probably wipe that stupid drunken smile off of his face real quick."

After the two had slipped off to Weiss's quarters, Ruby had stood with her back to Weiss's door while she watched her partner pack up her stuff for the road. Weiss was smart and decided to not take every single possession, so that if someone did walk by her room tonight they wouldn't find it barren. They then repeated the process for Ruby's room, which took substantially less time. The red head had packed up about an hour after she read Weiss's newest journal entry two days earlier, and had spent the past 48 hours thinking of ways to nonchalantly bring up leaving. She would never have taken Bradley's suicide mission otherwise. Ruby wasn't a fool, and knew how bad an idea the mission was the moment it left Bradley's lips. But as far as timing was considered it was perfect; it gave her the excuse she needed to say she wanted to leave. And as far as Ruby knew Weiss wasn't any more suspicious than she should have been.

It took the pair about an hour to go from being inside Bradley's stronghold to leaving the city limits. They could have done it in a quarter of the time, but Ruby thought walking out the main southern exit to the city probably wouldn't be the best idea, and if they really were sneaking out they might as well be thorough. The pair had both discussed beforehand whether it would be better to hide in the city until morning the next day before they left, or to brave the surrounding wilderness for the night. In the end they decided to take the risk and brave the wilds for just one night. While being out in the wilderness weaponless was dangerous, if they were still in around when Diego decided to attack they would surely not survive. Ruby knew she was only able to take out those ten men singlehandedly today because the first seven she caught unaware, and killed the last three in the scramble of confusion that followed immediately after she had been discovered. Against a larger force, in a fair fight, Ruby knew she didn't have much hope of getting Weiss out alive. Ruby was a better fighter than anyone in this new world order, but she still had to answer to human limitations.

And as an added bonus, if someone did notice their absence, Bradley wouldn't be able to send anyone after the duo until morning. No one who wasn't as desperate as the pair was would leave the city and stumble around in the forest at night, just to go get the women who would already have a vast lead on the searchers and be better equipped to deal with their pursuers as well. Knowing Bradley's personality he would probably just call it quits and curse his losses. Sometimes it really was nice being overestimated.

Stopping by a fallen tree, Ruby grunted while she rolled the trunk a few rotations, and then grabbed her old rifle out from a small hole in the ground. "I missed you baby," Ruby joked, mocking how much she used to love her old weapon. She quickly leaned down and handed Weiss her trusted revolver. Flashing the heiress a strained smile, Ruby shoved her hands in her pockets and turned down the nearby trail. "Let's get going..."

After walking for about thirty minutes the sun began to set, and Ruby lit up the flashlight she kept on an o-ring that attached to her pack's shoulder strap. Ruby left it dangling there, pointing at the ground and the white snow they were walking over. It didn't offer much light, but it did keep the surrounding ten foot radius visible in the approaching winter dusk.

Ruby turned to Weiss, who was nervously watching the surrounding trees, and waved a hand to get the blonde's attention. "You have any particular direction you want to go in?"

"No… you know I never do," Weiss answered, actually feeling slightly safer because of her partners relaxed attitude. There couldn't be anything more dangerous in these woods than the person standing next to her. Weiss had to believe that.

"Thought so" Ruby quipped lightly. Sticking out her hand and pulling in her thumb, Ruby wiggled her four fingers in front of Weiss's face, casting forked shadows across the blondes scowl. "Pick a number."

"Four." Weiss could only sigh at this. So they were just going to leave this up to chance as well?

Ruby looked at her hand for a moment, and then grinned sheepishly at her partner. "Pick again."

"What? No, Ruby… just pick one."

"Nope, I'm the driver and you're the navigator, remember?"

"And why can't we just use the one I picked?"

Ruby chuckled and said: "Forgot we can't go north from here, we're already on the northern most coastline… unless someone found out they could swim across an ocean and hasn't told me yet?"

"Uhhhhhhhh…" Weiss faked groaning, even though she was having fun with the jokes. She thought about it for a moment, wondering if there was any logic at all to Ruby's choices. "Okay then… two?

"Good choice! We haven't gone any farther east than here in over five years!" And with that, Ruby turned on a ninety degree angle to her left and led Weiss forward towards whatever they were going to find next in this hellish adventure of theirs.

* * *

**So, more of an action chapter than I had originally planned. I actually toned this down a lot from what I had originally wrote. The first time I wrote it everything in the middle part was from Ruby's perspective instead of Weiss's. Made it a little too graphic, definitely pushed the story over into M.**

**Give a rating and a review; let me know if I have something I need to improve on, or if you really enjoyed it.**

**Thanks again, and I'll see you around!**


	3. Dying Lights

"Fifty six?"

"Up"

"Seventy five?"

"Down"

"Sixty six?

"Down"

"Sixty… Ruby, this is stupid. Let's do something else..."

"Well... excuse me for trying to keep you entertained…" Ruby sighed. She was fine with stopping though; Ruby had the game rigged anyway. Blake had taught her a long time ago that no matter what, even if the other person cheated, a game like this could always be won in eight guesses. It came in use back when Ruby used to mess with Juane during their study sessions, and towards the end he thought the redhead was some "mind Jedi" or something. Ruby only lost when she messed up her mental math.

Weiss snorted as she continued to walknext to Ruby. "Yeah… because this was soooo entertaining."

"And because of that jewel of a comment," Ruby grumbled, "I'll leave you to come up with the next road trip game."

* * *

Their "road trip" had lasted the past two weeks, as they slowly wandered their way east through the forests on their way away from Caric. It had been two weeks since they abandoned the city, and during that time the pair hadn't run into a single person, dead or alive. No bandits, no infected... nothing. They hadn't even seen a corpse!

Well, that or the dead bodies were covered by so much snow that they still weren't visible. But out of sight equaled out mind, and it was definitely a morale booster to not have to see dead bodies piled up in the streets or stacked against walls every day. Unfortunately, the weather showed no signs of changing anytime soon, and it still lightly snowed most days.

_Most days_. Today heavy snow was coming at them at a forty degree angle, and a harsh gale whipped by their faces and through their hair, the icy wind stinging their cheeks and leaving the pair with a constant blush. At least it was the type of snow that was immediately hard as soon as it landed. If the pair had been forced to hike through knee-high snow they would have made a tenth of the progress they had. Other than an odd depression every once in a while in the snow where they would suddenly sink to around thigh deep in the slush, they were mostly able to just walk across the powdery water as though it wasn't even there.

Still though, even with the winds annoying bite, the experience was actually somewhat refreshing. Just walking through the forests and farming country was nice, not having to worry about constant threats like people or zombies. Ruby liked to spend her quiet moments daydreaming that nothing had happened over the last seven years, and she was only out on a hike with Weiss again. The redhead had actually gotten her partner to do that with her on the rare occasion in the past, after weeks upon weeks of constant prodding. But Ruby didn't let herself daydream for too long though; those days were long gone, and dwelling on those memories would only give Ruby unnecessary heartache over what she'd lost.

After a small, uncomfortable silence while they both waited to see if the other wanted to say anything, they returned to walking in silence. Trying to be sly, as Ruby usually got annoyed when her blonde partner scrutinized her, Weiss cast a reproachful eye over at her partner.

Ruby actually looked… better. She looked happier. The months of stable meals and protection from the elements had left the two stronger than they usually were this time of year, and in better spirits as well. And as much as Ruby hated to let the change happen, she had actually been sleeping more too. Not by a large amount, but maybe instead of the redhead's usual four hours of sleep, Ruby would now get five. And while she had raise hell the next day, Ruby had actually slept for six hours after Weiss decided to not wake the redhead after a long day of traveling. The dark marks under Ruby's eyes were actually disappearing slightly, and now you actually had to look to see the slight purple bags that dusted the tops of Ruby's cheeks.

But by thinking of how good things were right now, Weiss couldn't help but remember all the times that were bad. It was like when you tried to think of the answer for a pop quiz. Eventually you'd remember your answer, but not before you dragged yourself through every single idea that remotely had to do with what you were thinking about.

Last year had been a particularly rough ordeal, worse than any other year before that. Weiss remembered almost starving to death on multiple occasions through that winter, and the same had been true for her partner. If they hadn't gotten lucky and found a hibernating bear, which still put up a decent fight against the two severely weakened women, they definitely would have died out in the cold, starved under some tree. Still, this time of year was difficult for another reason as well.

Weiss cast another glance at her partner, uneager to ruin the happy morning. As much as she'd found Ruby's game annoying, the blonde knew the conversation they were about to have would be painful, and either end in stony silence or, even worse, in screams.

Still, it was a conversation they needed to have. The fact that this was so hard to talk about was one of the few things that proved to Weiss that Ruby was still human, somewhere inside of Ruby's iron hard shell.

With a heavy sigh, Weiss looked up at the girl next to her, breaking the silence that had been constant for the past few hours. "Well, I've been avoiding a certain topic… and I think you have been too."

"I don't want to get into it." There was a sense of finality in Ruby's tone, and anyone else would have stopped there. But Weiss knew she had to keep going.

"But I do. It's important."

"But I don't, and I say it isn't."

"Don't you think we should at least say something…" Weiss then mumbled meekly: "Today marks that it's been five years since-"

Weiss was cut of at a snort from Ruby, who gave the blonde an incredulous look. "Say something!? What the hell could there be to say?"

"I don't know, maybe you coul-"

Ruby cut off Weiss with a rude wave, then sarcastically announced to the air: "So Yang, heeeeey sis, what's up! Just wanted to give you a holler… letcha know what's been going on." Ruby paused theatrically for a moment, and then cupped her hands to her mouth and yelled at the top of her lungs. "MAYBE SAY SORRY FOR GETTING YOU RAPED AND KILLED FIVE YEARS AGO!"

Seeming to calm down a bit, Ruby sneered, and then spat: "But hey, accidents happen right? Best wishes, your little sis Ruby!"

"Come on Ruby!" Pinching the bridge of her nose between her fingers, Weiss tried to think of another way to approach this. The only reason Ruby was being combative was because the redhead really didn't want to feel anything for her dead sister. Ruby didn't want to stop and mourn her losses. She didn't want to feel the pain that came with losing your loved ones.

Thinking of a new angle, Weiss began again. "Let's just say she is up…up there… on some cloud or something. I personally don't think so, but I know you do. Is that what you really would want to say to her?"

"What would you say I tell her? You apparently think there is some way that I should go about this. Why don't you take the lead?"

"Ruby, it doesn't matter what I would like to say to her… this is about what _you_ would want to say to _your_ sister."

Ruby sniffed back over her shoulder at Weiss while running a hand through her hair. "I think any normal person would be able to guess what I have to say… I'm not too keen on outward expression and all that nowadays. Yang wouldn't have a hard time guessing my thoughts if she actually wanted to; we were never the…" Ruby scrunched her face up for a moment as she tried to think of a way to put her thoughts into words, and then made air quotes while finishing her thought. "We weren't the '_sharing feelings'_ type of siblings anyway."

Something in that sentence sounded wrong to Weiss, although she couldn't quite place her finger on what it was. Ruby took advantage of Weiss's moment of thinking, not wanting to talk about this any longer. And as luck would have it, something gave Ruby the perfect excuse to kill the conversation.

Ruby shushed Weiss, and motioned with a hand gesture past the trees that they were about to walk through. Howls, snarls, and a large number of barks could be heard past a small hill that hid from view whatever was going on over the steep slope. Pulling her hunting rifle off of her shoulder, Ruby crept forward quietly, already prepared to fire the rifle at an enemy. While they hadn't seen any people, they had seen large amounts of wildlife wandering through the wilderness, and sometimes a pack of wolves could be more dangerous than a group of humans. Humans could at least be bargained with if something goes wrong. There isn't any bartering with feral wolf, one who hasn't seen a human in over seven years.

As Ruby peered over the ledge with Weiss following close behind, she caught a glimpse of what was causing all the commotion. A pack of wolves had surrounded two feral dogs, one of which was lying motionless on the ground. It was interesting to see the dark brown hound standing over its light beige pack mate, even though from here it looked as though the dog it was trying to protect had already died, its eyes faded and its tongue hanging lazily out of its mouth. The darker terrier should have just run; it would have probably been able to survive if it had. Instead, the two watched silently as the dog was overwhelmed and pushed to the ground by several members of the wolf pack, the rest running around the struggling terrier to feast on the other fallen hound.

A startlingly loud gunshot rang out across the field, and the entire pack of hounds scattered at the sound, not taking a single moment to search for the origin of the echo.

"What the hell Weiss!" Ruby yelled loudly at her partner, who still had her gun pointed into the air. "You couldn't have done anything…"

Weiss just shrugged, and began to walk towards the two dogs while snapping over her shoulder "I guess I'm also being irrational today."

Ruby followed behind sourly, knowing that Weiss was just taking out her frustrations on her._ 'You want to play that way Weiss? Fine'. _Ruby was angered by Weiss's actions; they were just a waste of resources and a burden of heartache. But more than that though… the blonde made Ruby actually feel guilty over all that she put Weiss through.

_'Maybe I'm just selfish… making her live like this with me. It's obvious she doesn't want to keep going any longer… but I don't want to die yet. And I can't live without her. I know she doesn't love me anymore… and I can't bring myself to love her in the way I used to either; I had to give up those feelings to make myself strong enough to just keep her alive. But I won't live on my own in this world. It's too cruel, and I'd rather just die myself than have to live on alone. I know I deserve hell for all the things I've done… I just hope I haven't drug her down to my level.'_

Ruby shook the dark thoughts out of her head, and followed behind Weiss as she watched the blonde slowly pull out her hunting knife from one of her heavy coats many pockets. Weiss clutched the knife to her chest with both hands, resting the back of the blade against her collar-bone, as if she was afraid of the blade flying away if she let it go. And as they both stood side by side over the two dark blotches in the pure white snow, Ruby felt her heartstrings being pulled at.

It was a depressing sight, walking up to the two hounds, both lying on top of the snow while small droplets of blood leak from their wounds. Ruby's earlier guess had been right, the light beige terrier was obviously dead, and had probably passed some time ago. But what tugged Ruby's heartstrings most was how the chocolate-brown dog was still trying to follow the approaching pair with her eyes, even if she could no longer move. They were both dead, even if one was still breathing.

Weiss knelt next to the dog, running her hand through the dogs dull brown fur. The terrier's tail started beating against the ground for a few seconds, wagging happily as it was pet. A quick jab in between the eyes from Weiss ended the thumping.

"…"

It looked like Weiss wanted to say something, but just couldn't get the words out of her mouth. Weiss avoided Ruby's eyes, and while she wasn't crying Ruby could tell she was on the verge. Nobody blinked five times in a second, and a layer of mist seemed to be wafting off the blonde's eyes.

"Well… would you be offended if I suggested the dog for dinner?" Ruby had lost all of her sense of tact long ago, and wasn't sure if that was stepping over some line Weiss had decided to make on the spot. Lately it seemed like Weiss got attached to every single thing she laid eyes on.

Weiss just shrugged her shoulders, and began walking away. Looking over her shoulder the blonde looked back at Ruby while answering with: "I'll find firewood".

* * *

As the sun slowly descended behind the horizon, with the two friends staring at each other apathetically over the fire, the winter's chill finally began to set in. It wasn't snowing heavily anymore, although the snow was still thick enough that the melting ice surrounding their small cooking stove threatened the dryness of their kindling. Weiss might have to go search for more firewood if it continued on for much longer.

The dogs hadn't been too great a meal; as starved as they were, Ruby was sure they were more than three-quarters bone.

Ruby looked up to meet the heiress' gaze and reluctantly asked the question that had been biting at her for a few minutes while she mulled it over in her head. "Do you want to put the fire out now or later?" Every minute the left the fire on, they risked attracting the attention of some threat, whether it be the wolves, the infected, or even other people. Ruby didn't want to bear the cold for another night, but she'd rather be miserable than dead.

Weiss just thought about that for a moment. Once the fire went out… well, the day was over. They didn't have watches or star maps to let them know when midnight had passed. So the arbitrary line they had been forced to make was just when the light died out and came back the next day. "Not yet… we still need to talk about Yang."

Weiss expected to hear an argument from Ruby… a sigh, a groan, a mutter of impatience. Instead, Ruby just continued to stare across the fire at Weiss, watching the light flicker off of the heiress' form.

Weiss was perched on top of a large boulder, looking down on Ruby who had sprawled out across the ground next to the fire. The redhead's body curled around the fire pit tightly, and she propped up her head with one hand while leaving the rest to lie on the frozen grass. Ruby had chosen to take the position so that she would be able to soak up as much of the fire's heat as possible before they had to extinguish their camp for the night. But the cold didn't bother Weiss. Even though she knew it wasn't true, Ruby sometimes wondered if Weiss could have just sat out in the freezing snow in the buff. She might not have not even given a shiver at the freezing temperatures.

Gazing up at Weiss, Ruby began to wonder if the legends and fairy tales she had heard as a child were true. She remembered as a child hearing Yang's mother tell them stories about magical snow elves and other such creatures choosing to live among humans. Weiss could have passed for one. Peering down from her platform, Weiss's face was hidden in shadows and only left her two pale blue eyes visible, one of which pointed down slightly as though it was weighed down by the old scar tissue. It reminded Ruby of the old masks she would see hanging in the neglected drama room at Beacon, one side smiling while the other in tears. The fire's light didn't do much to illuminate the rest of Weiss either, and turned the blonde's entire wardrobe to a golden orange hue. But the moon, at a phase where it was almost totally shattered, provided more than enough light behind the heiress through the tree branches to turn Weiss's hair to starlight.

But just because Ruby found Weiss's appearance beautiful didn't mean that she would give in to it.

Ruby stood up, and without looking at Weiss again began to kick snow onto the fire pit, extinguishing the largest of the flames under piles of snow.

"Hey!" Weiss stood up quickly, and jumped from her small ledge towards Ruby, intending to knock the redhead away from the fire. Instead she just flew through empty space as Ruby dodged the hurtling white object and twisted around the fire, continuing to extinguish the blaze from Weiss's side.

Weiss scrambled back onto her hands and knees from where she had landed in the snow, and twisted back around to look at Ruby and shouted at the redhead. "RUBY STOP IT! WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT THIS!"

Ruby didn't notice Weiss's shouts, and even if she did she ignored her partner's complaints. She now worked in a frenzy, as if somehow the fire being extinguished was similar to extinguishing her own pain that she had felt the entire day. As the light from the bonfire died down, so did the aching in her heart that Ruby didn't know how to deal with any longer.

Weiss wouldn't have it. Just before the fire was totally dead, she reached into the center of the pit and ripped out from under the snow one of the last branches that had still remained alight. The blonde shook the branch lightly, and as it received the air it needed to stay aflame, the embers flared back to life and blue patches of fire cast long shadows across Weiss's left half. She then twisted so that the blazing stick was protected behind her, where Ruby wouldn't be able to get at without going through the heiress first.

Ruby let out a long sigh, and then turned to Weiss and calmly mumbled to her partner across the dead fire pit. "Weiss, put it down before you burn yourself."

"NO! NO RUBY, WE ARE GOING TO TALK ABOUT THIS! TODAY! AND WE ARE GOING TO DO IT WHILE IT IS STILL TODAY! AND I DON'T GIVE A RATS ASS IF YOU DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT! BECAUSE I DO!"

Ruby was stunned by the blonde's outburst. Not by the general content of the message, she heard an outburst like that from Weiss every few weeks. But what really froze the redhead was that Weiss had yelled…

"A rats ass?" Ruby actually began to laugh to herself quietly, although in the almost nonexistent light it looked as though she was merely shrugging her shoulders at Weiss. "I don't think I've heard you use that one before Princess."

"Shut it Ruby! I don't care why you feel as though you don't want to say sorry!"

"… Weiss, that branch is going to set you on fire in a minute… and as much as I think it would be a great laugh to see you run around in circles trying to put your hair out, I would prefer you just put the branch down."

"No, I know you. You'll just put it out as soon as you get the chance." Still, Ruby had a point, and Weiss jerked sharply when an ember fell off of the torch and landed on her exposed wrist. The branch probably only had a few minutes left of fuel before they were plunged back into total darkness and would have to keep this conversation up in the dark, which would be hard to do.

Ruby heaved a large sigh, and then said: "I promise I won't."

"Then dig out the pit."

"Excuse me?"

Weiss yelped again as another ember fell off the upper branches and landed on her hand for the second time. Straightening up she looked back at Ruby and snapped at her. "Where do you expect me to put this down, and where did we already have firewood?"

Ruby just did as she was told, and soon the fire was alight again, although they had to keep feeding it with new kindling to keep the old flame alive against the moisture that had been added by the snow. Neither of the two sat down though, and they stared at each other across the fire, as the flames reached up to about their knees in between the two.

Ruby's face took in the light better than Weiss's did, she had to look down to meet the cold blue eyes that glared at her. Ruby's chin didn't jut out as much either, and left the majority of the light to make it up to her eyes. Ruby rolled her jaws for a few moments, as if she was getting ready to give some grand speech and needed to work up to it. But the red-head was only able to get out a crappy excuse. "I don't have anything to say Weiss. I'm sorry, but I just… don't."

"I don't believe that… you said plenty next to me this morning."

"Do you want me to say that again?"

"No… I don't want you to say anything like _that_." Weiss thought back to their conversation earlier that day, and it finally struck her what she had though was wrong about their exchange. "You said something along the lines of 'Yang wouldn't have a hard time guessing your thoughts if she actually wanted to'…"

"Yes…"Ruby answered with trepidation, bobbing her head up and down slightly to get the heiress to her point.

"You don't think she'd want to?"

Weiss received back from the redhead a hard "nope."

"Why not?! She was your sister Ruby; she cared about you more than anything else in the world, both before and after…"

Ruby turned sideways, as if looking at Weiss out of the corner of her eye somehow made it easier to talk. "We both know Yang held grudges. I'd be pretty pissed myself if I died just because you were sleeping and I didn't want to wake you…" As an afterthought Ruby sniffed "ruin your beauty sleep and what not."

"Wha… Ruby, she held grudges over crappy inconsequential things, like Juane spilling coffee on her shirt. You seriously think Yang would blame you for what happened?"

"I'd blame me Weiss. I'd blame me…" Ruby saw Weiss open her mouth, as though she was prepared to argue that point. Instead of letting the conversation continue on any longer, Ruby cut Weiss off and ended the pep talk. "Weiss, I've lived believing this for four…well no, I guess it's five years now. I don't think some magic pep talk you're going to give on the spot unprepared will give me any kind of epiphany".

And with that Ruby turned away and laid down on the ground against the fire again, trying to cover herself as best she could with a heavy snow blanket the redhead had swiped from the city before they left. She didn't even put out the fire.

Weiss felt like a failure. How could she have not seen this over the past five years? Anyone else would have… anyone better would have. As she felt a few single tears roll down her cheeks, Weiss began to curse herself. Would things be different if the blonde had noticed Ruby's guilt and headed it off before the regret could become an integral part of the redhead's personality?

Feeling utterly hopeless and worthless, Weiss covered the fire with just enough snow to reduce the flames to glowing embers, and took first watch with bloodshot eyes as she stared at the mistake she had allowed to form across the fire pit.

Across the first pit, Ruby laid down against the cold ground and miserably thought to herself _I deserve to be uncomfortable. I said we should go to Atlas. I got Blake killed. I was asleep and Yang went out on her own because of that. I got my own sister killed. And I've tortured Weiss over the past five years. I know she hate's me. I read the letters she's written, and I'm sure there are more I haven't found. _

Ruby scrunched up her face and clamped a hand over her mouth, trying to muffle the strangled gasps she was making so that Weiss wouldn't hear her actually cry. As Ruby felt a tear roll over her hand and onto the cold ground below her, the redhead was finally crushed by the weight of the world. Feeling those tears leak out meant she had finally lost.

Neither of the two knew the other had cried through the night.

They both cried together.

They both cried apart.

* * *

**Thanks for reading, and I'll see you at the next chapter. I've left a lot of foreshadowing for what's to come. See you on the flip side!**


	4. The End Of All Things

Ruby sat rolling a small twig between her hands the next morning, feeling raw and emotionally drained. Ruby didn't know how long she had cried for, but she doubted it had been longer than a minute. But the fact that she cried was all that mattered. Looking across the fire, which Ruby had relight in the early morning twilight once the sun had started to rise, the redhead stared sadly at the curled up figure that was barely visible under the blanket across from her. Weiss was lying in the fetal position under the blanket, and Ruby knew that Weiss was just as torn up as she was. Ruby knew that Weiss only slept with her arms around her legs, tucking her chin in between her knees, when things were bad. So when Weiss suddenly rolled up and refused to make eye contact with Ruby, the redhead was struck with guilt as hard as though it was a lead weight in her stomach. Without saying a word to each other, Weiss and Ruby quickly cleaned up their camp, and walked off towards the sun, which was barely visible through the thick canopy overhead.

As the two passed through the forest, Ruby actually recognized where they had ended up. They had arrived at the entrance to Black Fall. Blake Fall was a mountain pass that connected the massive Forever Fall forest which surrounded Beacon, Signal, and the other cities on the eastern side of the pass with the rest of the country. Black Fall had once been a dangerous place, crawling with Grimm. It had at one point gotten so bad that traveling through the labyrinth of canyons carved out by fast-moving streams had been marked as off-limits. When there had still been electricity, a cart system had been used to just ferry people over one of the many mountain range's peaks.

But now, with all the Grimms long dead, Black Fall only represented a simple choice. Would they attempt to climb over the mountain, and chance the blistering cold winds one last time? Or would they risk getting lost in the labyrinth of subterranean caves that crisscrossed the entire mountain range?

Ruby pondered that question in her head, although she didn't dare ask it out loud. While Ruby was brash and tackles, she had at least learned to gage Weiss's mood. And it felt as though Ruby was walking next to a small black cloud of negativity. In truth, both of the two huntresses were in a foul mood. One because of her failure as a partner, and another because of the weakness she thought that she had succumbed to.

As the pair walked through the forest, the snow actually somewhat fluffy under their feet, Ruby decided to try to let her anger go. Weiss didn't deserve it, and she shouldn't receive backlash from trying to help Ruby.

Groaning internally, Ruby sighed '_this is not going to go well'. _Clearing her throat, Ruby asked: "So… we've been traveling east. Great... but what now?"

Weiss just sniffed and shrugged her shoulders, her thoughts angrily lashing out at the redhead. _I don't care anymore Ruby. Just drag me wherever you see fit. It's all I'm good for anyway. I'm like some shitty paperweight you keep around just to keep yourself from fluttering off into the wind._

"Thanks for the help princess," Ruby called back sarcastically, hoping to rile up the heiress. Unfortunately, all that did was make Weiss hunch in on herself more. Weiss had always been short, but now it felt to Ruby as though the person standing next to her couldn't have been more than five feet tall.

Ruby just sighed, and began talking to herself more than to Weiss. "So… after we get to the other side of the mountain, we can either continue going east, and we'll probably run into the shoreline within the next three weeks. We'd be pretty close to Beacon at that point actually, probably only take another two weeks on foot to make it there if we followed the shoreline. Or… we could turn south from here, take a trip down to Signal. I'd like to visit my old home town, although that could take around three months unless we rushed". Ruby turned to Weiss, hoping to at least see some kind of opinion in her friends pale blue eyes. Unfortunately the icy orbs were pointed to the ground as Weiss kicked at a partly exposed branch from a long dead bush.

Heaving a heavy sigh, Ruby reached over and taped on the heiress' shoulder. "Heeeyah Weiss…"

"Hm…" was the only response the redhead received.

Silently fuming, Ruby tried to pull out her sweetest voice possible. "Hey Weiss, do you think this scratch on my arm looks bad?" Ruby groaned in her head, thinking to herself_ 'uhhh…. I sound as though I've become some ditzy prom queen_.'

It did the trick though, and with the sudden change in tone Weiss looked up from her branch, wondering what caused the change in the redhead's voice. She hadn't even registered what her partner had asked, only that Ruby didn't sound like Ruby.

As soon as Weiss's head lifted and turned towards the other woman, she felt the sting of Ruby's palm against her face. It wasn't a hard hit, and it did nothing more than leave her cheek slightly pink and with a small tingle. But Weiss had been raised to take offense to such an insult, even if the dozens of tutors and years of high society training lessons had been all for naught. Clutching at her cheek and taking a step back, Weiss yelled at the girl standing next to her. "What the hell is wrong with you Ruby!"

Ruby was just as pissed as Weiss was though, and began a mini-tirade, one that had built over the past month and had finally overflowed with last night. While she had dealt with some of them, the red-head was still overflowing with so many emotions that she didn't know how to deal with. Ruby knew it was one of her greatest character flaws, but she didn't like what she couldn't easily put in a drawer and close off from herself. So the redhead decided she just wanted them gone.

Grabbing the heiress by both of her shoulders, Ruby both shook and yelled at her partner. "PULL YOURSELF TO-FUCKING-GETHER WOMAN! I'M NOT GOING TO BE ABLE TO HANDLE YOU JUST WALKING NEXT TO ME LIKE A ZOMBIE FOR THE REST OF THE MONTH!"

While she was yelling at Weiss, the redhead also shook the blonde, whose head whipped back and forth with the sudden motion. Around Weiss's neck hung a strand of pure white pebbles, and as they all clacked off of each other Ruby couldn't help but imagine one of the dried gourds that the citizens of vale used to make music with during their harvest festival. Still, that was a far off thought from what she was actually getting at. Shoving the blonde away lightly, Ruby finished her statement shouting: "GET OVER THE THINGS THAT HAPPENED LAST NIGHT! THEIR DONE! I REGRET WHAT I SAID, AND I DON'T WANT TO HAVE YOU REGRET THEM TOO. NOTHING HAS CHANGED, SO LET'S JUST MOVE ON!"

Ruby stood in the snow for the next few moments, breathing in deeply through her nose with the rest of her face scrunched up while trying to rake in her anger. It was annoying how hard it was to get her emotions back under wraps once she let them go. But as she felt her heartbeat slowly falling, she opened her eyes. And the second she did she felt an even harder slap across her own face.

"FUCK YOU RUBY! YOU ALWAYS TELL ME ABOUT HOW I'M NOT SUPPOSED TO...! HOW I'M JUST SUPPOSED TO..." Unable to finish either of the two sentences, although Ruby was able to guess what would have been there, Weiss just shoved her hands in her pockets while continuing to glare at the red-head. Pulling out her right hand and pointing it directly at the redhead's face, Weiss pulled out the meanest sneer she could. "YOU'RE JUST AS MUCH OF A SELF LOATHING PIECE OF SHIT AS I AM! YOU'RE A HYPOCRITE RUBY! AND A FUCKING GOOD ONE FOR MAKING ME BELIEVE IN SOME FAKE PERSONA FOR THE PAST FIVE-FUCKING-YEARS!"

Ruby left her face pointing back towards their old camp site, her cheek turning bright red as she tried to reel in her rage again. It was a lot harder now that she had a legitimate reason to actually be pissed. _Oh boy Weiss, you have no idea how badly I want to bust that perfect nose of yours right now. I don't care if you won't talk to me for a month. You don't need it to keep…wait…_

Ruby would have kept going, even though she would never actually really hit Weiss, but something out of the corner of her eye caught the redhead's attention and stopped her train of thought. Directly behind them, back in the direction they had been walking from, Ruby caught sight of two colors that shouldn't have existed in the perfect white snowy landscape. Two colors that didn't belong to nature.

The first was pitch black, fringing the side of an old tree that the two had passed only a minute before. That could have just been some oddly formed shadow fringing the side of the oak, or a patch of dead lichen still hanging from its host like the parasite it was. But what sent ice through the redhead's system was the second color. There was no mistaking it, and there was no explaining it away.

It was the grayed steel of the barrel of a rifle.

Ruby lost all remnants of her anger in that one instant, instantly replaced by cold fear, and with both arms she grabbed her friends shoulders and shoved the blonde to the ground behind a raised rock ledge. If she hadn't seen the rifle by that total coincidence, they both would have probably been gunned down right then and there. The two were standing in between end of the forest and the beginning of one of the dozens of entrances to Black Fall, and were totally exposed against a wall.

Ruby succeeded in getting Weiss out of the way, and the rock ledge covered the heiress entirely from their enemies. But Ruby, being taller and forced to stay out in the open while she shoved Weiss down, wasn't so lucky. As she fell besides Weiss, the redhead landed on top of the ledge next to where the heiress had been shoved behind… completely exposed to whatever was coming their way.

Weiss, still thinking the two were having a huge fight, remained oblivious to what had set Ruby off. Instead she thought that the redhead had finally snapped, and had begun some vicious attack. As the blonde fell, and Ruby disappeared from sight for a quarter of a second, Weiss expected the redhead to suddenly appear over the ledge, either to attack her with words or with fists. She quickly understood her misjudgment when the blonde heard the loud crack of a rifle… and a scream of agony a second later from the redhead.

* * *

Weiss heard Ruby shriek "fucking hell!" and a second later Ruby rolled down into cover next to Weiss, landing with absolutely zero grace on her side half on top of the heiress. She quickly rolled off Weiss, who just gotten the wind knocked out of her by Ruby's shoulder slung rifle hitting her directly across the chest. Blocking out the pain, Ruby grabbed her rifle off of her back, and hunched down against the rocky outcropping they were hiding behind. She couldn't feel anything from her right leg except for an extreme burning sensation, as though from the knee down she was boiling in oil.

Weiss wasn't as level headed though. While she had regained some of her composure, Weiss still couldn't catch her breath. With the sudden shock the blonde had gone paler than even her porcelain white complexion should have allowed, and as she looked down at her partner's leg cold fear struck her to the core. The wound had mostly been covered up by Ruby's black cargo pants, but what was visible was a marbled mixture of red and white. The bullet had destroyed Ruby's kneecap, and had probably ripped open several of the veins leading to Ruby's lower leg. There was no way in hell that they were going to be able to run.

Ruby on the other hand hadn't given a second thought to her leg… she was already in combat mode, and had become completely oblivious to everything except what she could hear. Ruby had amazing hearing, close enough to rival Blake and her extra set of ears when the two had argued over whose was better, and already began planning out what she was going to do.

_I hear… at least two people coming at us from where we came from. One's directly in front of Weiss, and the other… ten feet to my right, both about fifty feet back._ _I know there is another one at the very top of the hill; I was shot by a rifle, and that is where I saw the muzzle….. And I hear something tearing up the snow all the way up at the top of the hill, where I saw that rifle barrel in the first place. I can't tell what that is though… maybe somebody dropped something next to their sniper and is scrounging around trying to pick it up?_

Ruby wasn't ready to fight, and Weiss wouldn't be useful until she actually knew where their attackers were. Weiss had never been a great shot, and she really had only ever used her pistol when she was forced. So Ruby did the only thing she could think of to stall. Start a conversation.

"Hey! Kind of underhanded attacking two unprepared women while they're having a heart to heart conversation isn't it!"

The pair both waited silently, praying that they would have a few more seconds to plan out a counter attack before they actually had to fight. Ruby had decided to make the guess that there were only three people there, although there could have been more that she was unaware of. But if Ruby wanted to think she could win the fight, she had to think there even was a chance of winning.

Unfortunately Ruby's gambit didn't work.

Suddenly, from the very top of the hill where Ruby had heard the odd scraping noises, a distinctly male voice yelled: "Get em!" That was followed by the sound of multiple dogs suddenly howling for joy as they ran down the incline, ready to tear into either Ruby or Weiss.

Ruby disregarded all sense of self-preservation and got onto her one good knee, propping up her rifle on the ledge before her so that she was still mostly behind cover. Ruby saw eight dogs running down the incline, although she didn't take any time to double count. With three bullets she took down three hounds. And after a missed shot on a shorter one, Ruby quickly killed another two. Ruby felt a bullet whiz through her hair next to the left side of her face, although that didn't faze her. She stayed positioned in the exact same place, taking another shot at the dogs.

At this point the remaining three dogs were around half way down the incline, only seconds away from reaching the two of them.

"WEISS RUN!" Ruby screamed at the woman next to her while looking forward, missing another shot as the dogs got closer and closer. Instead of following orders though, Weiss sat frozen, still staring at Ruby's leg. What was she supposed to do?

Her question was answered when Ruby shouted: "Get the fuck out of here!"

Without taking a second glance back, Weiss turned on a dime and flew at a full sprint into the mouth of the ravine, disappearing from sight in less than a second. Leaving her partner to defend a futile fight.

* * *

As the blonde ran at break neck speeds along the rock ledge that ran parallel to the river below her feet, she heard the sounds of several barking hounds still chasing her. Their howls were barely audible alongside the roar of the water and the sound of her own boots smacking against the rocky surface, although she had to assume that they all had decided to pick the white blur instead of the red bloodstain back at the gorge's entrance. _Good, at least now Ruby stands a chance._

Apparently the dogs had chosen a moving target, instead of finishing of Ruby. At least Weiss's conscience would be a little clearer for abandoning her partner. If Ruby died defending Weiss… well, the blonde didn't want to finish that thought. Ruby surviving was a guarantee. This was the redhead's world now. Ruby not surviving was an absolutely ludicrous thought.

The only reason Weiss had maintained a lead on the hounds, all of which were faster than she could ever hope to run, was due to her ability to jump and vault over all the large rock ledges in her way instead of running around them like the dogs were forced to do. She would have been caught and dragged down to the ground in the grips of the canine's jaws long before that otherwise.

Weiss's boots, not as snug a fit as she would have liked, caught on an exposed chunk of limestone as she ran down the ever thinning pathway. The blonde only stumbled for less than a quarter of a second, but it was still more than enough time for the closest dog to get the chance to jump for Weiss's face.

If the dog had aimed lower it would have succeeded. But in passing up the blonde's legs or torso for the chance to sick itself on her face, the Doberman left itself open while it soared though the air. A flash of silver, and a spray of blood following behind a second later, appeared as Weiss slashed out at the dog with her hunting knife.

Weiss didn't stop to see where she had struck. She didn't wait to finish the job. Without another glance, she continued hurtling down her steadily decreasing path. And the two remaining dogs jumped over their fallen pack mate and continued to give chase, unfazed by the Doberman's slashed throat.

* * *

Ruby shot another round, killing the fourth attacker she had seen attempting to make it down the mountain. Ruby couldn't feel relieved though as she pulled back the lever on the barrel and put a new bullet into the chamber. There were still more out there, Ruby just knew it. She still hadn't seen whoever had taken her leg out yet, and since she was wrong about her initial guess she assumed were there were more people in this group than that.

Ruby leg didn't hurt anymore, although instead dangerous numbness had consumed her entire lower leg and had begun to slowly creep up towards her mid-thigh.

The redhead's eyelids hung low, and it truly scared Ruby how tired she was. Adrenaline should have kicked her body into overdrive, and she should have felt as though she could run a marathon. Instead, as her pant leg grew warmer and the dark splotch in the snow grew, she couldn't help but feel as though she was drifting off.

_Pull yourself together! I can't stop now; Weiss is still running for her life!_

Ruby's eyes snapped open wider at that thought. She couldn't fail her friend yet. As long as she stood here, no one would be able to get past her to Weiss. So here she would stand, until she could no more.

Ruby had been right when she thought there had been more, and out of her periphery she saw the flutter of a coat in the wind as someone attempted to flank her in the tree's to her right. It was actually impressive how he had made down this far without being seen. But even more than that though, it was insulting how easily their group thought they would be able to take down the redhead. Apparently they hadn't heard any stories of the most dangerous person to walk across Vale since the beginning of the apocalypse… a small, unassuming redhead of 27, who would fight tooth and nail for Weiss.

He went down without much fuss, pierced through the rib cage by Ruby's last loaded bullet. As he went down, Ruby fumbled around through her dropped rucksack, trying to pull out the spare loaded clip she always kept on her person. As she felt her fingers find the smooth metal of the extra clip, she heard the sound of a pistol being cocked. It was directly behind her, in the opposite direction the last shooter had come at her from.

Ruby tried to swivel, to turn and at least do something in the face of her doom. But as she turned, she felt a hole be ripped through her right shoulder. Ruby dropped her rifle in pain, clutching at the wound with her other hand while her right shoulder burned with bone splintering pain. Spinning, landing on her ass with her back against the rock outcropping, Ruby looked up at cold, furious eyes.

As she saw a huge sniper rifle over the man's shoulder, she thought to herself: _Damn... there were six._

After that errant thought she felt a second and third bullet pierce her right rib cage, tearing her lung to shreds.

* * *

Weiss was in serious trouble. She was starting to run out of steam, although the adrenaline seemed to be keeping her going for now. After her third trip, Weiss's hands bloodied and her white jeans torn from the stumble, the two remaining dogs had caught up to less than five feet away from the blonde's coattails.

Still though, she continued sprinting across the stone path, hoping that something would give her an edge in a moment against however many dogs were still pursuing her. Weiss honestly had no clue how many there were; she had never taken the time to check. If the blonde had known there were only two, she might have decided to turn and fight. She could take two dogs. But as the eternal pessimist, a trait that had kept her alive multiple times in the past, Weiss assumed there were more than she could handle.

The roaring rapids were less than a foot underneath the ledge that Weiss was running across, and mist coming from the tumbling waves left the path slick and dangerous. Across the river, the opposite bank was above her head, somehow escaping the destructive lapping of the tides.

The blonde's heart sank as she looked ahead of her, and she saw that before the next turn in the gorge's bottom, about a half mile away, the ledge that Weiss was running on had been completely eroded into nonexistence by the constant pounding stream. Casting a look around, Weiss saw two options. The safest one, which Weiss completely rejected because of her incorrect assumption, would have been to just turn and face the two hounds still chasing her. Weiss had once been forced to take a fledgling Ursa bare handed; two starved dogs didn't stand a chance.

Instead Weiss's eyes landed on a small rocky outcropping a few hundred feet in front of her. Most of the stream was around ten feet across, but at that point, the stream narrowed to only six. Weiss knew that while she wasn't as fast as a the pack following her, she could definitely jump farther and higher.

Putting on a small burst of speed, using up the last dregs of her energy, Weiss sprinted faster than she had in years down the rock path, jumping onto the small rocky outcropping and from there to a smaller boulder that hung over the slick path. If Weiss had taken a moment to consider how slick a rock constantly getting hit by the mist from the rushing rapids would have been, she would have slowed down. Instead, Weiss forced out one last burst of speed.

With the burst of speed Weiss's boot skittered across the stone surface, and her left foot shot out from under her on the slick surface. Weiss lost all the momentum that would have carried her over the gap. She now fell, falling across the rift as her arms clawed at the air.

The blonde collided with rocky wall, a full body span lower than where she had planned on landing. Weiss's forehead smashed into the jutting out ledge, and the lights went out in the blonde's head instantly. She barely even felt herself fall into the frigid waters below.

* * *

Ruby stared up into the cold eyes of her killer, who had pulled down his face mask and begun screaming at her in rage. As the redhead held a hand over her chest wounds, she struggled to even breathe. She tried to look the man who would end her life in the eyes, although she didn't register a single word he said. It was probably some crap about how he would avenge the lives she had taken. Ruby's thoughts lashed out at him. If they hadn't even picked this fight nothing would have happened anyway.

Instead of the terror Ruby had expected to come with her death, Ruby just felt her eyelids grow heavy, and she was unable to keep them open any longer. As she slowly started to drift off into unconsciousness, Ruby's final thoughts were of Weiss. She knew they would be. In as close to loving as she could bring herself to go, she heard her internal voice complain: _Damn it Blondie, I knew you'd get me killed! If I die here and you didn't make it, I swear to god I'll haunt your ghost wherever it shows up!_

Ruby barely felt the strong blow across her face, as her attacker tried to get her to listen to him. He wanted the red-head to hear her killer's final curses before she was executed. _Sucks for you… I'll spite… you even… by dying. You… you… don't…you…_

And with that, as Ruby felt a few warm droplets of blood rain down on her face, the redhead's mind went totally dark, and all thoughts passed from her grasps.

* * *

**Thanks for reading, although I don't really have anything to say this time... Thanks again, and I hope you'll leave a favorite or a comment. It's always great to receive feedback, lets me know how things are going.**


	5. I Have Faith

**Quick note: this story has very different tone from all of my others so far. I personally think it really adds to the universe, but I thought about what people may want, and wrote it so that this chapter can be skipped. So if you don't want to get a smile from my 'parade of darkness' (someone was trying to be mean and called the story that, but I actually liked the phrase), then just keep moving on. This is more of a heartwarming chapter, and it doesn't contain anything a person would need to keep going forward in the story.**

* * *

"Hmmm… I wonder how that will turn out?" As a pair of deep purple eyes stared down on the watery scene playing out in front of her, she couldn't help but wonder if things would have ended up differently if she had been able to be down there with her sister and Weiss. Maybe if there had been three, the two loners wouldn't have been ambushed. For a few seconds she imagined herself standing next to Ruby and Weiss, squaring up to the bandits and facing them head on while her two teammates supplied her with backup. But shaking that image out of her head, knowing it would never be, Yang just joked to herself quietly while she watched Weiss.

_Bah… there's no point in mourning what could have been. I can't do much nowadays besides root from the sidelines and cheer them on. I wish I could even feel some remorse over everything they've gone through. Instead I'm just feeling jazzed about… well… everything._

It had taken some adjusting getting used to the whole weightlessness thing, being able to just float around wherever she pleased. And also being able to just appear wherever she wanted had been extremely disorienting. Yang remembered for the first few weeks she hadn't been able to hold herself anywhere for more than a few seconds before an errant thought carried her to the location of another one of the stray memories that her subconscious had suddenly conjured up.

Five years had given her some time to practice though, and Yang could now calmly follow from high above the earthbound blonde's path down the river as Weiss was whipped around by the rapids. Weiss's unconscious body somehow still appeared graceful in the grips of the waves, and while it may have been painful for Weiss to be tossed around in the waves, to Yang it looked as though her friend was performing some underwater ballet recital. Yang had always been jealous about the heiress's unconscious grace, up until the very end when she passed. Before she had seen herself in the memories of others after her death, Yang had always unconsciously seen herself as a big bumbling brute. She hadn't cared, but that was what she thought. She now knew she had always been just as lithe in her own way. But all of this thought brought something else into question: why was Yang even here watching Weiss?

Yang was fond of the heiress, even if to this day Weiss's uppity no good, goody two shoes attitude annoyed the blonde to no end, and truly felt pity for her old teammate's struggles. But Yang didn't consider her as important to her as someone else who was off a few miles in the distance. But for some reason Yang didn't want to keep hovering over her sister at this particular moment, in contrast to how she had hovered over Ruby's shoulder as she had been over the past five years. When the fight broke out, Yang for some reason decided to follow Weiss into the ravine instead of stick with her sister. And the golden ghost wasn't exactly sure why.

From both a million miles away, as well as directly in her ear, Yang heard a playful voice ask: "So you really would be okay with missing it?"

Yang smiled as she turned around in the air, momentarily taking her view off of Weiss. Hurtling towards her across the sky was a black shooting star, trailing streaks of purple and gold. And as it slowed to a stop next to her, Yang was momentarily blinded by black light. But it wasn't the darkness that a child would ever fear; it was the securing inkiness a person felt before they faded off to peaceful sleep.

Now hovering next to Yang stood her old flame Blake, still dressed in all black. Old habits die-hard. And even dying hadn't put a scratch in that particular trend.

"You're late!" While the outcry may have seemed furious to anyone else, they both knew better. Yang wasn't actually mad; she could never be mad at Blake. After a half a second, where it would have mad more sense to go on a mini tirade on the faunas, Yang just raised an eyebrow at the other spirit, asking what was on her mind. "...and why is it that every time I see you… you look more and more like a cat?" It wasn't an overstatement. Blake really did look more feline than she had been a few hours ago when they had split off to do their own things for a few hours, now with much larger ears and sharper teeth, which the faunas couldn't have hidden behind her smiling lips even if she wanted to. Blake was still as beautiful as she had been in life, but in a more stylized way than before.

The raven haired girl just shrugged her shoulders. "Like I'm the only one here who's changed. Yesterday your hair was waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay curlier than it is now. And where did the extra four inches of height you had on me go hmm?" After a second of thought, Blake hissed: "Also, I distinctly remember somebody saying they wanted some alone time last night... you wanted to mope and mourn or some shit?"

"Alright, alright… take a chill pill. Did you get up on the wrong side of the scratching post? You seemed fine last night..."

Waving off the innuendo, Blake just sighed at the bad attempt at a joke. "Har har har… but still, we should go watch Ruby instead." Floating down gently, Blake came to a stop with her decent about a foot above Weiss's submerged form. Reaching out towards Weiss, attempting for the millionth time over the past seven years to touch her pale friend through the water, Blake's hand only passed like vapor through Weiss's cheek. Blake didn't know why her heart fell every time she failed to connect with either Ruby or Weiss, she would honestly be more surprised if it ever did work. Sighing and pulling back slightly, Blake muttered to herself absentmindedly. "Weiss is an A, there's no point in rooting for her."

Flying across the surface of the water to keep up with Weiss, Blake turned back over so she was parallel to the heiress and looking up at Yang, who had descended down to the bottom of the ravine with the two girls, although she was the only one of them still floating in an upright position. "Come on Yang, let's go."

"To be honest Blake…" Yang squirmed uncomfortably for a second before grumbling: "I'd just rather not know until after the fact."

"What! Come on Yang, this is important! I was there when you di-" Blake's statement ended abruptly, already knowing that what she had said probably wasn't the best argument for why Yang should be there.

"Yeah, and I'm soooooo glad you were there for that! Even I don't remember anything from that night, and you have no idea how creepy it was when you were the one to explain to me how I died. It's even worse to think that you were there creeping on me the whole time!"

"Come on, it would be worse if I hadn't watched over you... wouldn't it? If it makes you feel any better he became an immediate D and died the next day that way too."

"It does but it doesn't. Still, I'd rather just find out in a month or too when Ruby either shows up or not."

Flipping over so that her bare feet now pointed towards Yang, although no gravity affected her black hair, Blake said "come on! Have some faith! You were a U also when you died, and you're here now!"

Yang thought about that for a second, passing through a tree branch as though it wasn't even there while she followed the two beneath her. A, U, and D. Accepted, Undetermined, and Denied.

Yang remembered a few of the conversations she'd had with older spirits, ones who had passed and moved into this bliss centuries ago. Up until around ten years ago, the rules for being a good person had always been pretty uniform. It didn't matter your race, religion, sexual preference (which was a good thing because that could have terminated all of team RWBY's chances right there in one fell swoop), political view, or lineage. All that mattered was if you were a decent human being. Literally all you had to do was not be a piece of shit… and you were in.

But around ten years ago, a few years before the world fell, the criteria changed slightly. Now it was more of a fluctuating line, and standards didn't seem to be the same for everyone. Murder didn't seem to stain your soul forever anymore, if you could justify it. Now it seemed as though a person could eventually work free of their guilt.

"Still, I didn't see if she was still a U when she got shot, I had left to follow Weiss before that. And Ruby has done a lot more…uh... things than I ever did. Are you telling me you aren't the least bit concerned for her?"

Blake just smiled up at Yang and went: "Nope! I have-"

"Yeah yeah yeah, faith and all that mumbo jumbo. You've told me before".

Blake only laughed at being cut off by her wife. There would have been a time, before she had given up on all of her worries, when getting interrupted had been one of the most angering things in the world. Now she just found it amusing to see the usually boisterous soul in front of her fretting over something that Blake viewed as a trivial matter. "Yes Blake. Because I have faith."

"Well, I'm a little worried still; I probably will be for a while! We won't be able to catch up with her while she's jumping around all over the place, so I only way I'll be able to know if she's actually here is when she starts slowing down." The last part of Yang's sentence came out in a jumble, and she wasn't sure if Blake had gotten all of that.

A small smile tugged at the sides of Blake's lips, although she massaged her face to rub it out. With a wry smile Blake purred: "Okay then, how about I give you some cold hard facts." Blake flipped herself over so that she was eye to eye with Yang again, and hooked her arm through the blonde's while keeping pace with Weiss's tumbling body. Weiss appeared to be breaking the surface just often enough to keep on being saved from the edge of drowning.

Without thinking about it, Yang nuzzled her face into the hollow of Blake's throat, immediately creating a giant mat of knots between the two of them. Blake started her carefully laid out argument, even if it was a waste of time. "So, I've talked to Summer multiple times, who's watched over Ruby her entire death-"

Yang interrupted Blake, fighting off a smirk while commenting. "Odd way of putting it."

"-her entire death. And she told me that Ruby was an A for the entire period leading up to the end. Which is obvious. I can't imagine her ever having done something too bad while we were around…"

"Hey, you don't know, she might have robbed some bank that we aren't aware of," Yang joked. "Torchwick might have corrupted her while we weren't watching."

Again, a small smile pulled at the edges of Blake's lips. "She continued to be an A, up until that one incident… where she became a D."

Yang stiffened at the sound of her sister being denied. It wouldn't be fair, not in the blonde's eyes.

Blake just went on, pretending to not notice the change in Yang's posture. "From there, she spent a few months as a D, and then went to be a U. Record setting time for something... like... what she did. She stayed like that for two years, and then over the past three your sister went back to fluctuating back and forth between U and A."

Yang gave out a large sigh, her worry beginning to fade while next to the faunas. It was amazing how relaxing the afterlife had been for them. Yang remembered the first time she had run into Blake in this new world.

* * *

After a solid month of suddenly appearing and disappearing without any reason, or without any reason that could actually explain what was going on, Yang had assumed that she had gone mad. It made the most sense really. She went to sleep, dreading entering the old manufacturing factory the next day, and then was suddenly in Ruby's old apartment.

Waking up already standing in the center of the room, Yang whipped her head around while she took in the room. _Why am I here?_

Ruby hadn't lived in this apartment since she had finished schooling when she turned nineteen, two years ahead of the usual curve. She didn't want to be left behind by the rest of the group. And as soon as she got home from graduation, her landlord promptly kicked the unruly tenant out. Ruby had spent the few months leading up to the end dragging her feet looking for a new place while couch surfing at Weiss's, although her balcony apartment overlooking Beacon had never found a new tenant. After all the things Ruby had done in the apartment, it smelled so much like a garage that the odder still lingered after the three years of seclusion from the world. The room was ripped to shreds, although a few of the old schematic's still decorated the walls here and there.

For some reason the blonde started going weak in the knees, and she reached out to grab a table corner to steady herself. But when Yang reached out to grab the edge of the table, her hand flew through the wood instead of grabbing the corner like she had planned. But before Yang could be shocked by that, she was whisked off by her mind to her own apartment, which she had shared with Blake.

Over the next week, Yang jumped from place to place, never staying in the same spot for more than a few seconds. At first the blonde just thought it was some chaotic stress dream. But as the days went on, and Yang didn't feel herself waking up, she began to assume that she had either slipped into a coma, or had just gone bonkers.

As she ran out of memories to expose and review, Yang's chaotic path across all of Vale began to slow down. Yang began to spend more and more time in single places, eventually learning to tether herself to a single idea. She'd always lose control at some point and slip away though, maybe three or four minutes after she arrived. Sometimes she would notice the area grow dark right before she left, even if she was standing in the middle of the Forever Fall in the middle of the day.

But it finally happened, one day as Yang hung over Summer Rose's grave. Her aunt. Her sister's (through love if not by blood) mother. Yang had never met Ruby's mother. She hadn't even been here herself. The closest she had ever gotten was at the bottom of the road, where she had waited on her motorcycle with Weiss while Ruby gave her respects in peace. But now Yang found it interesting that she had never known where Ruby's favorite quote had come from. From an old, washed up poet.

_And Thus Kindly I Scatter._

"LAAAAAAAME."

Yang groaned as she began to fade off again. Yang had always assumed that was Ruby's catchphrase because that was what her semblance did. It scattered rose petals everywhere. And seriously everywhere. Yang remembered back when they were kids, just after Ruby learned that she even had a semblance, her redheaded cousin would leave rose petals everywhere… just like how kids tracked in mud with their shoes. It was seriously annoying. Yang slid on them constantly, and had taken out a good number of her mother's favorite vases when she slipped on a pile of rose petals and would grab a countertop for balance.

A quarter second before she completely disappeared though, she saw a blur of black out of the side of her eye. And in the moment where she simultaneously hung above the grave, nowhere, and in her childhood bedroom, she felt a firm hand make a hasty grasp on her own. It was the first contact she had felt since she had begun her bought of insanity, at least the insanity Yang thought she had fallen into. And with the firm grip it felt as though she had, for the first time, been anchored to reality again.

"Finally," Yang heard a voice from behind her sigh. Turning around, Yang saw the mischievous smile of her girl, which she had missed terribly for two whole years. It struck a long silent chord within her when she heard a deep purring voice behind her joke: "Sometimes I seriously wonder if you're worth all the trouble I go through for you."

Yang's eyes misted over, but before she could open her mouth and say anything Yang felt herself being pulled off again, although for the first time the blonde couldn't tell where she was going to end up. It felt different begin brought somewhere instead of just appearing there. It felt more ominous, and she couldn't help but feel uncomfortable as she passed through total darkness while the world whipped by her. Blake seemed to know where she was going though, and without even thinking about it Yang tightened her grip on her partner, feeling the surrounding shadows beginning to fade.

When Yang opened her eyes, she saw that Blake had whisked her off to an old hill, which seemed both familiar and not. After a few seconds of silence Yang suddenly remembered the old school woods surrounding Beacon, and was terrified as she felt herself begin to fade away again. But after a half second she felt Blake's hand clamp down even tighter on her own, and that seemed to her hold her in place.

Swallowing loudly, using her voice in the first time since... however long this chaos had gone on for, Yang quipped lightly to the girl next to her. "While I'm really happy to see you Blake, could you let go of me for a second. My hand is getting kinda sweaty."

"Not a chance. I've chased you around for the past two weeks, and I'm not going to let you out of my sights again anytime soon." Blake ran her free hand through her hair, looking at the scenery in front of them. Yang hadn't seen Blake in two years, but even after all this time she knew that look on Blake's face. Blake was severely annoyed about something, and as the faunas looked around it seemed as though she was shooting the snow a glare, as if mad it was even daring to be there in the first place.

"Uh huh… sure. So, come on, cat got your tongue? What's going on?"

Freezing for a half second, Blake turned to Yang and gave her the most withering look the faunas could manage. "Are you serious? You're the love of my life, my one and only soul mate, and that's the first thing you say to me? We dated for three years, I proposed to you, married you, widowed you, watched over you for the past two… and your first comment to me is a stupid pun?"

"Ouch Blake. And they call Weiss 'Ice Queen'. You loved my puns … also, the first thing I said to you was that I _was_ really happy to see you."

"Pfff… like that makes a difference. I'm sure that pun was the only thing on your tiny brain anyway..." Blake looked off to the side dejected, her extra set of ears flat against her head. "How did I get stuck with pun queen," the faunas mock complained.

Yang pulled Blake closer to her, ignoring her sweaty palm, and rested her head on top of the shorter faunas's. "I _really_ am happy to see you."

"...hm," was Blake's only reply, although she did lean into Yang's embrace.

"So, um... while this is great... what's going on? I mean, like, am I on some spirit walk or something?"

Blake chuckled slightly while answering Yang elusively. "You could say that."

"Come on Blake, I want to know. Am I going to wake up from this at some point? Or am I just having the greatest coma of all time?"

"Nope...," Blake answered again mysteriously.

"Nope to the coma, or nope to the waking up?" After a half second where Blake just smiled up at Yang slyly, obviously with no intent to answer, Yang was forced to start guessing. "Uh... am I tripping on some of those berries Weiss told us were edible? I told her they looked like a bad idea, but when she and Ruby ate them I couldn't be the only one to bitch out."

A small laugh came from Blake when she answered "while you were smart to think that, no. You remembered those berries from when I told you about the things that we faunas can't eat."

"You have any experience with them?"

"Yep. Worst. High. Ever. Nothing made any sense..." While Yang didn't hear all of what Blake mumbled, she did distinctly hear the phrase "giant pink rabbits", although she decided that was a topic to discuss for another day.

"Come on Blake! You know I'm horrible with guesses. Just tell me!"

Sighing heavily, Blake pulled herself away from Yang, although she still held onto the Blonde's hand. Turning her slightly so that Yang was facing a large gap in the trees, Blake leaned in and whispered into Yang's ear. "Does this place seem familiar?"

At first glance, Yang would have said no. She didn't remember dead trees, old rock ledges, or the icy still stream far off to her right. But as her imagination took over, her answer changed. Suddenly Yang saw the echos of white streamers between autumn red tree branches, rows upon rows of white chairs... and a pure white arch laced with yellow roses at the hilltop.

After a second of hesitation, Blake let go of Yang's hand and disappeared for a half second, reappearing where their arch had one been. "It didn't last as long as I wanted it to, but this is where my life took its biggest change. Bigger than when I left the white fang, even bigger than when I came to Beacon. And I may be assuming, but it's where your's did too. I don't care if it isn't the autumn wedding we spent months planning and roping all of our idiot friends into attending. I want our new life together to start here as well."

Yang was the emotional one out of the two, but it was strange hearing Blake's voice choking up while she felt fine. Realization finally dawned on her, although she wasn't sad in the slightest at the thought. Moving over to Blake and pulling her back in again, Yang breathed into the cat's hair with a heavy sigh. "I'm dead aren't I?"

The blonde heard the faunas swallow loudly, and then answered back tentatively: "Yeah... you died one month ago today."

Instead of hearing sadness, anger, or resentment from Yang, Blake only heard in the blonde's usual upbeat tone. "Fill me in Blake. What did I miss?"

Blake cringed for a second, wondering how much Yang remembered from her last night. The faunas had talked to a few spirits, and she learned that if a person's death was too traumatic, they just wiped that day from their memories. Blake begged to differ, she still felt scarred from it, but apparently Blake's last day wasn't. Blake remembered her last day. She remembered her last minutes. She remembered feeling their teeth on her arms and legs, and feeling her throat burn as she screamed in pain while the monsters dragged her to the ground. And she remembered everything suddenly going black as she felt something bite through the back of her neck.

Blake sighed in relief when Yang answered "I don't remember anything that would make me think I died. I just remember going to sleep and waking up... like this."

After around ten minutes of explaining, Yang was still taking things pretty well. She even cracked a few jokes at her own demise, although she did scowl when Blake explained how she did exactly die, even if it was in the most roundabout way possible. And after all that, instead of thinking about herself, Yang's first comment was: "...How have you been Blake? I know I missed you horribly over the past two years, but I wasn't alone. I'm sorry you were up here all by yourself."

"Nah... don't be. Not as a complement, but most of us didn't make it as long as you did. We're actually taking bets on who's going to live the longest." Pinching the bridge of her nose, Blake sighed in mock anger. "Although now I owe Emerald a favor. That girl is mean though, I don't know what she's going to ask for..."

Blake hadn't been mad that she died first. She wasn't upset at being left behind. Instead, she was just overjoyed that she didn't lose Yang. While the faunas tried to not let it show, up until she knew Yang was here, the thought of her wife dying as a U and not knowing was horrifying. Separated for eternity would have been hell for Blake, no matter if she had already ended up in heaven. Blake said: "Paradise isn't paradise without somebody to share it with."

"So what? You're saying you're glad I kicked the bucket?!"

"Nah, I could have waited another few decades… it really hasn't felt that long. Really, time flies when you're having fun. But the only other person who I really can talk to up here is Velvet, and she still isn't that good at conversation."

"What?! Come on, I'm sure there are lots of people worth chatting it up with!"

"I guess, but most of them are either sour that somebody else made instead of them, or just spending their days doting on somebody still down there."

"But… isn't that what you were doing though?"

Giving Yang a withering look, Blake growled at the blonde. "Zip it Goldy Locks. We've got a lot of time to catch up, and I don't want to bet sick of you within the first hour."

"How long do we have?"

Blake just smiled back and answered her ominously.

"...As long as we can ever want."

* * *

Yang was pulled out of her reflective mood when she suddenly passed into shadows as the stream carried Weiss into a large cavern. The pair floated along silently, arm and arm, watching as their friend was still tossed around in the waves.

"So yeah, nothing to worry about. I have total faith she'll be fine."

"...but come on Blake. You're telling me you're not the least bit worried."

Blake's lips twitched silently again, although she still tried to play it off. "Nope, not at all."

Yang spun away from Blake, taking as intimidating a stance as she could while she was floating in the air. It was annoying not being able to stomp her feet, pound her fist against a wall, something to get her emotions across. "Alright cat... what gives? Why do you keep finding Ruby's death amusing? She was your best friend behind Weiss, and your sister-in-law to boot!"

"Tch!" Blake hummed to herself for a few seconds, mulling over the different ways she could put her point. In the end she just sighed: "but I just don't want to ruin it for you..."

If they could affect the world around them, the cave would have shaken with how loud Yang screeched. "WHAT?!"

Blake sighed and looked off into the distant recesses of the cave. Already, as they followed the current as it picked up speed, they had been carried far away from the mouth of the tunnel. But it wasn't dark inside of the caves. High above them, plastering along all the walls were luminous lichens, giving of soft green ambient light. It looked like a scene out of a fairy tale movie, and Blake half expected to see pixies dance out from behind the glowing stalactites.

"It's really pretty here... kind of sad nobody got to see this until we were all wiped out, isn't it?"

Yang paused for a second, putting aside what she was about to argue with her wife over. "If we had known something like this existed, we would have destroyed it by visiting so often." Yang reached out with a hand and brushed it through the spiky fungus, even if she felt nothing from the plant. "These are only beautiful because they were left in peace. It's better that we didn't know about these, otherwise every plant collector would have come along and destroyed these colonies to take a piece for their own collection, along with everything else that fell apart."

Blake made a deep grumbling sound in the base of her throat, as though she disagreed. "That is one downer of a thought... I'd like to think we would have realized how these plants needed their distance to survive."

Yang was perplexed by this turn in the conversation. Wasn't Blake supposed to be the pessimist? How could their roles in the relationship change so drastically, and constantly be flipping back and forth? "Maybe we would have... but I doubt it. Anyway, what gives with how you're talking about Ru-"

"Hey Yang," Blake interrupted, suddenly scouring the waterway they had been floating over. "Where did Weiss go?"

Yang stiffened, not noticing how she had begun to neglect her living friend. Casting a look around, the blonde saw that the heiress was nowhere to be seen in the slightly calmer waters below them. Fluttering down, Yang actually flew under the water for a moment, choosing to stay perfectly dry, and tried to see if Weiss had gotten stuck in a crack in the river bed or on a bleached white piece of driftwood that had fallen this far down stream. Suddenly Yang felt Blake yank on her ankle, and coming out from the water she saw her wife point with a finger back a few hundred feet. On a bank in the river where the water flowed much slower, at a pebble beach that had been left untouched due to an eddy in the rivers flow, a shivering white shape dyes green by the light had drug itself onto shore. Even from this far away, it was obvious that the figure was trying to cough out a lot of water, and she hunched over and rocked back and forth while attempting to clear her lungs.

"Well, I guess she is going to be okay for now." Yang mumbled idly to herself,"... I wouldn't have guessed out of all of us Weiss be the last one standing."

Blake again smiled, and hummed in agreement. "...sure she will be..."

"THAT'S IT! What are you not telling me Belladonna?!"

"Come on... you love surprises, don't you?"

Shaking her head and feeling her golden mane whip around her face, Yang answered: "Not today, not when the surprises are about my little sister. Just tell me!"

After a heavy sigh, exasperated that Yang couldn't even wait another five minutes, Blake quipped: "I haven't agreed with you once on Ruby dying, have I?"

"...Blake, I'm more than attuned enough to Ruby to be able to feel when she gets hurt. She was shot. Badly. Her lung was shredded... there is no coming back from that."

With a mischievous smile, Blake leaned forward and closed her eyes. "You feel who else is really close by?"

Yang hadn't even thought to check for others nearby. Pushing out with her aura, which had grown so much more powerful in the last five years, Yang felt every living thing within a few mile radius. At first she was overwhelmed by the sheer number of animals and insects living on the mountain side and inside the caves. The blonde refined her search, excluding everything except for other people from the results. It was amazing how dark the landscape instantly became, just a blip off to their right where a heiress was still hacking up a lungful of ice water. And a few more miles out, on the very edge of Yang's sense, was Ruby's fading life. Only two lives over dozens of miles of territory.

Except... there was one more spark, so close to Ruby's that it almost masked the fading soul entirely. And while it took a moment to place, Yang finally remembered who it belonged to. "Seriously Blake? That's what makes you think that Ruby has a chance? He'd probably want to execute Ruby himself..."

"I have faith Yang... it's too much of a coincidence for it not to be."

"But even then... he couldn't do anything. His semblance would have been lost so long ago..."

Blake laughed lightly, grabbing Yang's hand and pulling her away from Weiss. Cupping the blondes face in her hands, Blake planted a loving kiss on Yang's lips. After a few seconds where neither of the two moved, Blake broke the contact off and began drifting away from her partner. Offering her hand outstretched, Blake repeated herself again. "I have faith Yang. If being dead has taught me anything, it's that coincidences don't happen. And these odds are just perfect for things to not go our way."

And with that, Blake returned to the shape of a black star, and swirled around the cave twice before shooting through a wall leading to the surface. A quarter of a second later, a beam of pure orange light followed its path perfectly. And as the two stars crossed the sky and took off for the moon, Yang heard Blake laugh back to her one last time. "I have faith Yang."

Sighing heavily while following her soul mate up to the shattered moon, Yang grumbled angrily: "I guess I'll just have to have faith too then Blake."

* * *

**Thank you to LordMarc for the idea. And thank you all for reading! Ill see you around, somewhere on the site!**


	6. Don't Listen To Yourself

_This is a terrible way to die... drowned like a rat in ice water._

As Weiss felt herself get thrown back and forth in the rapids, her only emotion was a sense of melancholy for her fate. How could she let this happen? One moment in charge of her destiny, and the next completely at the whims of chance. As her body was slammed against a wall by the water, Weiss couldn't even guess whether she had hit the stream's bottom or one of the channel walls that had been carved out through centuries of the rapid's constant pounding. Weiss was so turned around by the rapids that she didn't even know which direction was up, although every few seconds she would feel one of her arms or a foot break through the water's surface and into the air. At some point the water surrounding her had become dark, and although every once in a while Weiss's head broke the surface of the water for a brief second for some air, she couldn't see anything when she did get above the rapids.

There was no sense of time within the rapids. The heiress could have been within the grips of the waves for anywhere between single seconds to full hours. All she could feel were tendrils of water pulling violently at her, causing her to continue to tumble head over heels in the waves.

At a particularly rough twist in the stream, Weiss felt her body get slammed into a submerged boulder. And a quarter of a second later, the heiress heard a resounding crack from somewhere inside her ribcage. At the pain Weiss involuntarily exhaled underwater, and she felt all of air inside of her lungs burst out of her lips and through her nose. Immediately Weiss missed the air that had been there only a moment before. It was odd how much she missed something she had taken for granted her entire life. It had always been there, like a friend that she had never valued. And now that it was gone, Weiss felt her lungs scream as they were filled with ice.

_There's no pride in dying this way. Even if I went out by my own hand, it would at least have been by my terms…_

For a moment Weiss felt her cheek scrap along what must have been the riverbed… or maybe it was the river's sidewall? Even so, Weiss was so cold that she could barely feel any of the dozens of screaming pain signals coming from her body. One addition made no difference.

Weiss was starting to feel light-headed as she continued her path down the stream, now staying totally submerged. It was actually more peaceful in this section of the stream... more relaxed. The water flowed a little slower here, and the heiress had stopped tumbling chaotically down the stream. Weiss only felt her back scraping against what she now knew was the riverbed. She knew it was the riverbed, because as the heiress was looking up at the tumbling surface of the water, she saw muted green lights above her. So it was night-time… or at least that was the assumption that Weiss's brain made. And that of all things was what drove Weiss into action.

_Oh my god… if the stars are green… how dirty is this water!? I'm… I am NOT dying in this cesspool, where the stars look fucking green!_

While it was a great thought, one that would have driven her to action any other day, Weiss's body didn't respond in the slightest to her brain's orders. Oxygen deprived and beaten half to death by the rocky path, Weiss's limbs simply lacked the energy to move. The blonde screamed at her own body again, her fury at the situation boiling over into pure rage.

_Move! I don't care if the name means nothing anymore! I am a fucking Schnee! I will not die in some waste pool like this!_

Again though, nothing changed. All Weiss felt was the back of her winter coat getting caught on a few of the rockier portions of the channel bottom. A few times the fabric got caught for a few seconds before the nylon would snap and she would be released back into the grips of the waves again. And as Weiss's rage began to seep away, it was replaced by cold, bitter sadness.

_Ah… no hope in hell for me anyway. Maybe this is what my name is worth? Just a nameless death, for a nameless player. I probably could have just been called Female Schnee Two, and been just as useful._

As she began to give up hope, Weiss didn't even register when her boots dragged across gravel. When her face broke the surface of the stream for a slight second a moment later though, it sent a shock through her fading mind. Weiss's body, moments before insolent, now seemed to react to her brains signals again. But Weiss was conflicted in sending them.

_It's always been this way… whenever I want to succeed, I can't. And whenever I give up, I'm just given what I need to keep on... enduring? Yeah, enduring. I've always won just because somebody else was there to keep me from falling into last place. A series of lucky chances given to me by others. My sister, taking the fall for me so I wouldn't have to immediately marry somebody else for the good of the company and leave Beacon when I was nineteen. Or getting paired with Ruby. While I never admitted it, I would have quit the whole huntress thing out of anger at least a dozen times over if she hadn't made me stay. I used to think all the petty squabbling by our classmates was beneath someone like me, even though I was no better. And then she spends the last seven years protecting me while I couldn't do the same for her. _

_I'm... I'm so sorry Ruby. I got you killed, because I was as useless and weak as always. __I didn't want that to be what my life was worth… I never wanted to just be a burden for others and rely on pure chance to be saved…_

But subconsciously, even if her oxygen deprived brain couldn't get the words out itself, Weiss did want to live. Because she craved what she had been taught to chase since her childhood. She craved the thing the heiress felt she had been denied her entire life. Weiss wanted control. If she was going to die, it would be at her terms. So as an arm involuntarily shot out and desperately clawed at the gravel that had coated the bottom of the riverbed, Weiss's body moved on its own and crawled up a slope where the blonde could see foam lapping against a rocky shore.

As Weiss's weighed down body desperately crawled its way up the incline, she felt herself once again be pulled at by the rapids. But the blonde was out of the worst of the rapid's influence, and try as it might the water couldn't drag her any farther back into the stream. With one last surge forward, just as her body was about to give up again for the final time, Weiss broke through the water's surface and pulled herself onto shore.

Now surrounded by air, Weiss tried to take in the biggest lung full that she could. But she couldn't. The space was already taken up by frigid water. Still half in-half out of the stream, Weiss began to cough violently, feeling the water shoot out of her lungs through her mouth and nose. It was actually quite painful, and as air began to find its way into her lungs, the space inside her chest seemed to burn as it was forced to do its job again.

Even after all the water was gone, Weiss was still crouched over coughing violently, her forehead pushing against the pebble shore while her back arched in the air. It actually hurt to just breathe in and out, and Weiss began to wonder if she had made the correct choice. What if she had fought so hard to live, just to die for some odd reason on the shore? Maybe there was a point where you just couldn't come back from drowning, even if you were able to breathe again. Weiss's oxygen deprived brain began to step outside of the realms of science, and began making wild guess's at what was killing her. _Maybe the water gets into your blood, and it's going to just drown me from the inside even though my lungs are clear._

It was a ludicrous thought though, and as Weiss felt tears streaming from her eyes up over her temples from all of her hacking and coughing, she slowly began to regain some semblance of composure. While her lungs still hurt like hell, they weren't screaming out in pain like they had been moments before. Now her breath was more of a raspy rattle, and after a few seconds of groaning the heiress got to her feet and slowly trudged the extra foot out of the calf high water and onto the shore.

Now on her feet, and out of the water, Weiss cast a look around. Looking down on herself, still not entirely clear minded, the blonde grumbled at her appearance. Her pure white outfit, drenched with water and weighing her body down, had been stained green by whatever had been in that putrid stream. It wasn't until Weiss tried to wipe at her jacket with her right hand, and saw her hand was colored green as well that the heiress looked around.

Weiss hadn't turned green, and looking back in the stream, Weiss now understood that the water was most likely sparklingly clean. As she looked up Weiss saw dozens upon dozens of stalactites, many of them larger than she was, hanging from the ceiling of the cave that she had washed ashore in. And coating the stalactites were thousands of colonies of glowing green moss. Those had been the constellations that Weiss had thought she was seeing. Individually they didn't provide much light, but through sheer numbers the colonies gave off a strong green glow throughout the entire cave.

The lichen supplied more than enough light to see by, and Weiss took in the area she had washed ashore in. The cavern was a perfect circle three hundred meters across, with a small lake in the center of the circle taking up the majority of the cave's floor. One side of the cavern had the stream that Weiss must have come from flowing out of a small tunnel and directly into the small lake. And on the other a larger river, almost three times as big as the fast-moving stream, flowed lazily on out of the cavern into a large tunnel. The bank that Weiss was standing on hugged this edge of the river and continued on into the second tunnel.

As Weiss stood there, admiring the view, her sense of pain suddenly kicked into gear. And it hit the blonde hard, as though a sledge-hammer suddenly swung forward and hit her in the gut. Stumbling slightly from the sudden shock, Weiss finally took in the aggravated screams her nerves had sent her. The first message was an overwhelming sense of cold, as though she was freezing in her own clothes. Which she probably was. And second was pain. The pain pretty much covered her entire body, as the blonde had been smashed up badly by the abusive rapids. But the two main points that hurt the most were Weiss's left hand and the right side of her rib cage. Remembering from her survival classes at Beacon, Weiss decided to deal with the cold first.

Weiss knew she had to get out of her soaked clothes, which were leaching off her body heat. Throwing her pack off to the side, which had miraculously somehow hung onto the crook of the heiress' arm, Weiss began to get out of her clothes as fast as she possibly could. The blonde's frozen fingers fumbled with her jacket, quickly shrugging off her soaked nylon jacket and the heavy knit sweater she wore underneath that. Moving her left hand through the sleeves while she took the clothing off was painful, although Weiss knew it was better to take the situation one step at a time. Using only one hand she then ripped off her feet the waterlogged boots and socks that were freezing her toes. If they had any feeling in them, it probably would have been painful to walk across the pebble shore. She then pulled off her belt and pushed her pants, which had always been a size too big, down her legs.

Stepping out of her pants, now left in only her undergarments, Weiss decided she had done enough. Her teachers would have scolded her for worrying about modesty in a moment like this, while her life was hanging on warming up. While it was probably irrational, Weiss didn't want to disrobe completely, even if she was without a doubt sure that she was alone. Besides, Weiss already felt slightly warmer now that she was out of the soaking clothes, even if she was now standing in the frigid air. One problem down.

Now came the moment of truth. Taking a hasty breath, Weiss looked down at her hand. Her breath caught it her throat, because while she was relieved to not see any bone sticking out, the sight was still pretty grim. At some point, Weiss must have smashed her hand in the tumbling waves against a rock wall. Because while her thumb, pointer and little fingers were fine, both her middle and ring fingers bent at the second joint away from her pointer finger. Weiss's ring finger actually crossed over her pinky finger, and the two mangled digits had both turned an angry red color.

Weiss had never reset a finger before, but the heiress knew she couldn't just leave them like that. She really didn't know what she was doing; Ruby was the one who had actually ever learned about first aid. Taking a guess at what she should do though, the heiress just grabbed her middle finger and violently tried to yank it back into place. Weiss heard a pop sound, which she guessed was a good thing, although the digit still hurt just as much if not more than it had a moment ago. She then repeated the process with her ring finger, which was less successful. Weiss didn't hear any pop like she had with her middle digit, and even after she tried twice the finger still pointed off at a slight angle. But it wasn't anywhere near as extreme as it had been a moment ago, and for now Weiss's patch job would have to do.

The rest of the pain was just something that Weiss would have to live with. Weiss had broken ribs before while out on assignments, and from that experience the heiress was pretty confident in saying that she had cracked at least three. She couldn't do anything if there was any internal damage, so the blonde just decided to not worry about it and hope for the best.

Already feeling sore, Weiss hobbled over to her discarded bag, which she had dropped by the edge of the stream. Leaning down and grabbing the handle on her pack, Weiss realized something was wrong when she felt almost no resistance as she lifted the bag.

"…Fuck me" Weiss groaned as she turned the bag over and shook it wildly, hoping for something to fall out. Other than a few drops of water, the bag was totally empty. At some point through the tumbling of the rapids, the pack must have opened and released everything into the stream's waves. There was absolutely nothing inside the bag except for an old pocket sewing kit, one that she had only used once or twice over the past few years. Weiss had lost everything.

Throwing the bag at the cavern' s wall in rage, Weiss began to curse her fate. _So great, I'm fucking underground, stuck with nothing, and I'm still freezing cold and wet! This has been a great fucking day!_

Still though, Weiss couldn't just stand there and do nothing. Looking down at the rocks at her feet, Weiss's mind began to wander, and before she knew why the blonde began to think of the old kid shows she would watch when nobody else was around. Sure the heiress had been way too old for them, but Weiss hadn't cared. They were simple and to the point, with no twists and no cliffhangers. Just garbage that was easy to rot her brain on. And in the back of her mind Weiss remembered one of her favorite characters, an old western cowboy, had used a pair of rocks to light a stick of dynamite in the show.

Picking up the two closest to her feet, two dull brown oval rocks, Weiss tried to smash the two against each other to create a spark. Nothing. After a few tries, where she tried to orient the rocks in different ways, Weiss dropped the two and sighed. _These won't work… what about those over there?_

Over the next ten minutes, Weiss limped back and forth across the rocky bank on the balls of her feet, trying to find rocks that would actually work. She'd pick up a pair, strike them off of each other a few times, and drop them and move on if they failed her. Finally Weiss found a set that seemed to work: a pair of silvery gray stones that at least gave off sparks when she scraped them against each other.

Limping back to where her pack had landed against the wall, Weiss decided there was no better kindling in the room than the moss itself. Reaching up with her good hand, and feeling her abused muscles ache at the motion, Weiss ripped down a stretch of moss as long as she was tall and at least half as wide. Folding it over a few times, Weiss threw the bundle unceremoniously on the ground and attempted to set it on fire with her new stones.

It took almost ten minutes to get the stupid fire going, and even when Weiss succeeded it was only a small reddish-brown glow in the center of the bundle. Weiss threw another mass of lichen on top of the flame, hoping to grow the fire, and sat down against the wall of the cavern. Without warning the fire suddenly flared into life, and while it gave off the most acrid smell Weiss had ever ran into, it did provide more than enough heat, and soon Weiss was no longer shivering from the cold.

_At least there is that… now what am I going to do? _

But the day's events had left the blonde both low in spirits and moral, so Weiss just sighed to herself internally and mumbled out loud "I'll just deal with whatever comes in the morning…" And with that, Weiss curled up with her arms around her knees, and laid down next to the fire. Lying on the rocks wasn't comfortable, but she was so exhausted that she had no trouble drifting off into a light slumber.

* * *

"Ah… Ow… Fucking hell…" Weiss groaned as she pushed herself of the ground with one arm, feeling all of her muscles scream as she used them to reposition herself. Apparently the resting time Weiss had given her body had allowed it to realize how beat to hell she was. As if she already couldn't tell.

At some point the fire had gone out in the… night? There was no way to tell time here, there weren't any paths to the surface that Weiss could see, and no light coming in through cracks in the wall. For all Weiss knew it could have been the middle of the day. Now in her old pit, a few embers glowed dully in the center of a black scorch mark.

Weiss pushed herself off the ground, and felt even more cries in agony from her legs as she stood up. Her neck cracked as she looked around for some more moss to burn. It was a kind of sad though, as she lit up her side of the cave, it became darker and darker as the glowing moss no longer covered her corner of the cavern. Still though, she needed the warmth and light more than ever. Reaching up again, and feeling her shoulder burn in protest, Weiss ripped down a few large patches of moss from the wall and threw them on top of the embers, hoping that they would catch fire without her needing to do any work.

Weiss slowly crouched down next to the fire, wincing as her knees and ankles sent her needly messages of pain. But as she sat down, she saw that instead of lighting the new moss ablaze, her new kindling had simply smothered the embers out. A single tendril of smoke spiraled upwards out of the pile of green moss as the ashes lost their flame. Weiss grabbed her two flint stones in anger and tried to strike up a new flame, missing the stones as much as she actually got them to connect and strike off of each other.

While she sat there, Weiss thought to herself on the predicament she had gotten herself into. Working on autopilot, the blonde swung the stones at each other, missing as much as she actually connected while Weiss stewed over the situation. _Well, this is great. I can barely stand, I'm stuck underground in the middle of the mountain, and I've got no supplies… and... and I'm all alone…_

Before Weiss could dwell on that final thought though, a fire suddenly kicked into gear in front of her. And by the light, Weiss could see how badly bruised she was. She had at one time joked with Ruby on how easily she bruised, and had been compared to a banana by Yang multiple times in the past. But now, looking down at the dozens of purple splotches on her arms and legs, Weiss silently cursed everything from bad genes to her stupid inability to tan. Tan people didn't bruise as badly, or at least she had never seen a tan person receive as obvious a bruise. And some of Weiss's bruises were very apparent, such as the large fist sized blotch on Weiss's right side that ran from the bottom of her ribcage upwards. As Weiss looked at the bruise, she explored the wound with her fingers, and pressed down in a few spots. While it hurt to touch, at least the ribs stayed in place and didn't shift under her fingers.

Weiss didn't want to dwell, as there wasn't anything positive to think about, so she just walked over to where she had dropped all of her clothes and pulled them off the floor. They weren't heavy like they had been when she first left the water, but they were still damp and filled with moisture from the piles she had just left them in. Pulling them over to the fire, Weiss laid out all of her clothes on the opposite side of the pit, hoping to dry out her gear quickly. And as she laid out each piece of clothing, Weiss did inventory on all of her possessions.

Really, there wasn't much good news with her search. Sure she still had her clothes, but she was missing pretty much everything else. Weiss's pistol wasn't among the pile, and neither was her hunting knife. And every one of the blondes pockets were empty, save for a wadded up hunk of papers that Weiss identified as being her journal pages. The ink had all ran together, and the paper was almost unreadable. They could have been salvaged and dried out though, if Weiss took the time to save her diary pages.

Weiss Began to gently pull apart the pages, until a line from the letter caught her eye. "I don't feel as though I'm living... I'm just putting off my death". _More of my defeatist attitude, huh?__ Well, I didn't need these anyway… they haven't done me any good._ With a dispassionate flick of the wrist, Weiss threw the wet paper into the fire, and heard a few pops as the waterlogged paper's moisture evaporated in the heat.

Sitting back down again Weiss just stared into the fire while she waited for her clothes to dry. She really just wanted to put her shoes back on, so that she could walk around on the beach without feeling the pebbles dig into the bottoms of her feet. But that would take time, and with nothing better to do, Weiss leaned her head back and tried to fall asleep once again. It was a lot easier than she thought it would be.

* * *

When Weiss awoke again, the fire was still going, although it would probably run out of fuel again in the next few minutes. She still felt just as sore, and as she pulled herself up the cavern wall by divots in the stone, Weiss could barely keep herself standing. But she couldn't let herself fall, and after a moment to get herself together, Weiss straightened out to her full height and walked over to where her clothes had been laid out.

At least they were all dry, and as the blonde pulled on her winter clothes, she thought to herself what she could do next. Going back the way she came wouldn't be an option, as Weiss wouldn't be able to swim up such a strong current back to the surface. So she really had only two choices: stay and die... or move forward.

_Ruby would hate me if I gave up now... after all we struggled through... but it would be so easy..._

Fully clothed again, Weiss shoved her hands in her jacket pockets and turned away from her campsite, already dreading the next leg of her grueling journey. What if the path was a dead-end? What if she ran into obstacles she couldn't overcome alone?

_How can I go by myself? I'll probably just die somewhere... trapped at a dead-end... lost in the dark..._

Weiss shook her head, chasing those worries from her mind. The river had to let out somewhere, and that somewhere had to be better than here.

_I can't know that... It will be quiet again, even quieter than with Ruby... I _just _can't go on by myself anymore..._

But Weiss shut that inner voice down, and tried to lock it away, as deep as she could. As Weiss walked towards the large tunnel entrance, leaving the small semicircle of light that she had rested in behind, the blonde also tried to leave behind all of her doubt and fear. She wanted to leave behind her self-loathing, her self-doubt, her pessimism, everything negative that had brought her life to this point. Everything she now blamed for all the bad thing that had happened in her life. It was an irrational thought, but the more she pondered on it, the more Weiss realized she could draw back every mishap in her life to those emotions. They were anchors that Weiss had clung to. And she was sick of them.

_It would be so easy to stop... I could just sit by the fire and daydream what time I have left away..._

As the blonde traded the warm light of the fire for the soft cool glow of the tunnel moss, Weiss angrily mumbled to herself "I'm not allowed to quit anymore. Ruby may have given it to me, but it's my fate now, and it's mine to control."

_I'm making a mistake... I'll just torment myself before I actually die starving at the bottom of a pit..._

Now yelling, hearing her own voice reverberate off of the tunnel walls, Weiss angrily stated to the air "Ruby died for me." The realization hit her hard after she yelled it out and heard herself say it back a moment later. And any other day it would have destroyed the heiress to hear that. Any other Weiss would have been destroyed. But instead, all that cruel reality did was solidify her resolve. "Ruby died for me! And I am NOT wasting her sacrifice!"

Quieter this time, now that she was outside of the circle of campfire light, Weiss kept on talking to herself. "Yang blamed herself for what happened to Blake. Ruby blamed herself for what happened to Yang. I blame myself for what happened to Ruby…. But I'm not going to live like Ruby did. And I won't be like I was before. I have to keep going now, because Ruby would hate me if I quit now...like I always have before."

And with that, without any weapons or supplies, Weiss strode out of the cavern and into the tunnel, leading herself deeper and deeper into the bowels of the mountain.

* * *

**Alright, so… if parts of this seem a bit repetitive, that's because I wrote about half of this before the last chapter, and about half of it after. So that's why Weiss drowning was in both. But, way more detail here! Which you may not like… but hopefully you do though.**

**So yeah, follow the story and comment, I always want constructive criticism or to hear any readers opinion. Thanks again, and I'll be updating soon!**


	7. Hostile Savior

Two figures walked down the narrow valley path, being careful to not slip into the gurgling rapids below their feet. A single false step would end either one of them, especially while the harsh winds were whipping past them through the ravine, tugging on their clothes and trying to knock them off-balance. The taller figure in front leisurely strolled ahead of the other, not waiting for his limping companion to catch up. He cleared the path of debris while his partner lagged behind, and playfully kicked the corpse of a Doberman into the hissing waters below.

A pair of grey eyes followed the hound's corpse as it sailed through the air and landed with a splash in the black waters below. "So Weiss at least fought back... she can't have just died here..."

A snort came from the hooded figure in front of her, who looked back at Ruby over the scarf wrapped around his face. Only his coal black eyes were visible as he glared back at Ruby, snapping at her angrily. "You're reaching Red. I've told you over and over she's dead. I came looking myself after I found you; thought I'd get the gang back together. Nothin when I looked then, and nothin while we're looking now. Your little girlfriend probably just dragged the other two mutts in with her when she fell into the river."

Ruby wasn't convinced though. Weiss had to be alive; it didn't make any sense for the blonde to die. At least not yet, not while Ruby still felt a sense of purpose. '_No... Weiss is alive, somewhere. She just has to be.'_

Behind her Ruby heard her savior, who was still being a real jackass, joking to himself at Weiss's unknown fate. "Dumbest blonde I ever met, she even takes the cake from your dumb bimbo of a sister... literally, she could have taken any other path, and would have been perfectly fine. Takes a real moron to find the only dead end in the entire mountain range. Instead sh-!"

He would have kept on going, but at that point Ruby swirled around, ignoring the flair of pain in her knee, and brought her steel toed boot up right in between his legs.

His eyes almost bulging out of their sockets, he fell to the ground, safe from the path's edge. And as he fell to the ground Ruby stumbled too, landing on her hands and knees. In the quick motion, Ruby had felt something tear inside her, deep in her chest. Ruby coughed into her palm, ignoring the groans coming from the figure in the fetal position in front of her.

After the few second long hacking fit, Ruby pulled her hand away to see it covered in crimson speckles. Glaring at the figure lying on his side, the redhead wiped some of the excess blood on her lips off with her sleeve and growled: "First off, you say anything like that about Weiss or Yang again, and your ass is going in this river." Straightening to her full height, she looked down at the crouched over finger and held her palm out towards him. "And second, you did a really shitty patch job."

Now rolling on his back, still cradling his injured pride, he glared daggers at the redhead through teary eyes and wheezed a simple "fuck you." At the end, as though it was a separate thought, he added through gritted teeth "... bitch!"

Ruby sighed, taking in the scene before her again. How could she have traded Weiss for this dumbass. In the few short hours she had been walking with the living again, how could everything have fallen apart this badly? Thinking back on everyone she had known, Ruby actually wondered if there was anyone on the planet she would have wanted to have been saved by less.

Anyone at all...

* * *

"Finally you're awake… you've been pissing me off how much you sleep. Come on, get up."

As Ruby opened her eyes and stared up at flickering shadows across a dusty ceiling, she didn't wonder why she was on a cold, stony floor. She didn't question why out of the corner of her eye she could see a rosy fire crackling away merrily. Instead she was wondering how she could be seeing anything. Hadn't she died?

"Come on bitch! I heard you shift; I know you're kickin' it again." Ruby felt a slight nudge on the side of her head as something hard and cold taped against her temple. "You can actually be useful and help me redo your dressings. It's a pain in the ass to do them while you're lying on the ground and I'm forced to work underneath you."

Shifting her neck slightly Ruby looked over in the direction of the voice, which was distinctly male… and somehow vaguely familiar. Originally just out of her line of sight, now hovering over her, a familiar face peered down from a rock ledge above her. One that mixed a playful grin and an angry scowl quite well. After a few seconds, where the pale face smiled at Ruby crookedly while she stared back dully, the old memories suddenly clicked.

When Ruby finally placed the face, instead of smiling back she involuntarily scrambled away and tried to reach into her back pocket where she usually kept her spare knife.

As she moved, she saw the perched figure above her leap down at her, a heavy winter coat fluttering in the air as he shot through the space separating the two. Just as her hand slid off her chest and to her side Ruby felt half of her fingers get pinned under a boot, and looked up to see a gun barrel being pointed down at her face.

"I didn't waste all that time and energy I spent healing you to have you go ripping open all of your wounds. If you did something like that… well, I wouldn't heal you again."

"Long time no see, Mercury," Ruby spat up at the figure leering over her, who had aimed the bottom of his boot at her face.

"Good to see you to Red." After a second where the two starred each other down, creating a tension so thick it was almost palpable, Mercury made the decision to step off Ruby's hand. Slowly walking backwards away from Ruby, being careful to not take his eyes off of her for a second, he sat down close to her level on an overturned log by the crackling fireplace. As he walked, his shoes made an audible shnick-shnick sound as the gun barrels on each of his shoes clicked against the hard shale floor. Sitting back down on top of his wooden throne, Mercury put his hands behind his head and leered down at the redhead, sneering: "I'd like a thank you when you find your manners... bitch."

Sitting up slowly, feeling a slight throbbing coming from her chest, leg and shoulder, Ruby looked around the area that she had woke up in. Ruby could tell that she was in some kind of cave, and looking out to her right Ruby could still see snow clinging to the ground a dozen or so feet out at the mouth of the tunnel. The sky was a deep purple, and she could see the light given off by the moon lighting up the clouds in the sky, even if the brunette couldn't see the moon itself. Off a bit to her right, Ruby saw all of her possessions, minus the rifle, piled up against the cave's wall.

Watching Mercury out of the side of her eye while she sat up, Ruby got the strongest feeling of déjà vu. It felt like a blast out of the past for her. Sure Mercury was older, probably in his early thirties now, but he really looked the same as when she had last seen him almost eight or so years ago. Dressed in all black, except for a pair of silver gloves and old grey boots, Mercury looked fit and lean in his winter gear. And he was strangely clean-shaven, without even five o'clock shadow on his face.

Looking down at herself, Ruby saw that under the thin fleece blanket she had been resting under, Ruby's entire torso had been covered in white gauze. And from the itching Ruby felt around her knee, Ruby could guess that her leg was wrapped just as thoroughly. "How am I fine?"

"You're not," Mercury snapped back. Bringing his ankle onto his knee and resting his chin on his palm, he stared Ruby down as though she was a difficult math problem. "I'm out of practice, and while I covered up your wounds and reworked most of your arteries so that your leg wouldn't shrivel, I didn't do much else. You stretch too much, or at all really, and you're going to rip all _my_ _hard work_ to shreds."

While anyone else would have been intimidated by Mercury's presence, Ruby saw through his thin attempt at bravado almost instantly. He was overdoing the macho act, and it was easy to see how twitchy Mercury was. Although there really wasn't much reason to be worried; Ruby still felt like death. If Mercury wanted her dead, he wouldn't have much of a fight on his hands.

Still, Ruby was a little stunned, how he made it sound as though pulling someone back from the brink of death was something that should have been done more efficiently. "Wait... how did you even-"

Cut off by an impatient gesture from Mercury, Ruby received back a growling answer in the form of a question. "You do remember why Cinder kept me around for as long as she did, don't you?"

"Uh... you had a healing semblance, didn't you?"

After a short snort, Mercury sneered: "a_ healing semblance?!_ Red, I'm insulted that you would knock me down that low". Rolling his shoulders as though he was prepping to give some grand speech, Mercury looked down his nose at her with a twisted smile. "I was, and still am, the world's best field medic. Ever." Mercury paused for a second, before adding a bitter side note. "At least... at least before everything went to shit. I healed the entire white fang army, over a hundred, single-handedly during that last skirmish we fought in before the world fell apart."

Groaning at the memory, Ruby sighed "uh… I remember that day. I thought we were done, when you suddenly roll up with Neo and pick everyone up off the floor".

"It was harder than I made it look, I passed out after that," Mercury commented with a small smile, as though reliving the old war stories warmed his heart.

"Who fucking cares if you passed out? We had you!" Ruby covered her face with her hands and groaned again, even louder than before. "It was twenty verses two hundred, and we-"

"One hundred and eighty six" Mercury cut in, although Ruby continued on as though she didn't hear him.

"And we won! We only had one casualty… and bless his soul," Ruby added sarcastically, "but nobody cared about Dove! Even Cardin wasn't fazed by it! We had you guys!" Throwing her hands up in the air in frustration, Ruby glared at Mercury and growled: "then **you** show up, switch sides on us, and forced us to retreat! God damn it Mercury! You ruined everything!"

"Yeah, like you weren't a constant thorn in my side either. You gave me so many headaches back when we were still going strong, you and your team's shock tactics on our bases were a pain in the ass to deal with."

Now it was Ruby's turn to stare down Mercury. "If I was such a pain, why did you even bother saving me then? I was dead, and so was..." Suddenly Ruby's mind froze in its tracks. _Holy shit, how could I forget about Weiss!_ Without even finishing her sentence, Ruby began whipping her head around, looking for Weiss behind some rock ledge or tree stump. Her stiff neck creaked loudly at the sudden movement as she whipped her head around, looking for some sign of her partner.

With a raised eyebrow Mercury asked "looking for the girlfriend?"

"Where is she?" While Ruby's voice sounded no more animated than when she had complained about the lost battle only moments before, in truth she was reeling internally. She had to be here. She had to be okay. The brunette couldn't comprehend the idea of Weiss not being so. "Where is Weiss?"

Mercury twisted his neck, and after a dull popping noise he answered her absentmindedly.

"...Dead."

Ruby felt as though she had been electrocuted. After a half second, where she stared dumbly at Mercury, the brunette flared back to life, raising her voice to the point where it broke. "Weiss is not dead!"

"Well Red, she ain't walking among the living anymore!" Mercury sighed dully as he continued on, saying: "She's finished, gone, finito! She played her last song, bit the bullet, took a plane to Vegas, yada yada... you get my point."

Pushing herself off the hard shale floor to her feet, Ruby stumbled for a few seconds as the blood rushed out of her head and left her feeling light-headed and dizzy. Ruby couldn't remember feeling this stiff in a long time. Interrupting Mercury's tirade of analogies, the brunette asked: "How long was I out for?"

"Well, by the angles and trajectories of the sun, stars and the moon…" Mercury began joking, although he trailed off when he caught the murderous look on Ruby's face. Swallowing loudly, Mercury answered in a more level voice: "Three days, give or take a few hours."

Ruby nodded absentmindedly, cursing her bad luck. '_Sure I should be thankful to be alive… but damn, three days gives Weiss a big lead on me'._ Walking over to where she saw part of her possessions piled high against the wall, Ruby leaned down and grabbed her heavy black winter coat. Pulling her bad arm through the sleeve, the brunette stopped for a second as she felt her thumb get caught in a hole over the right sleeve.

Just as she got her hand all the way through the jacket's arm, a train of thought just crossed Ruby's mind. A sleazy thought, somewhat obscene and mildly disturbing. Looking down at herself, and at the bandaging around her midsection, Ruby realized that her clothes hadn't disappeared on their own. And while anything that she would have wanted to keep covered was either covered by the gauze or her underwear, she wasn't wearing anything else.

Wheeling around with fire in her eyes, intent on laying waste to Mercury, she shrieked at him in rage. "You fucking pervert!"

Started to the point of jumping a full foot off of his stump and landing on the cave floor, Mercury reacted badly and gave her a shaky smile in response to the brunette's shriek. With eyes so wide they looked as though they would fall out of his head he asked in a shaky, joking voice "excusez-moi?"

"I should kill you right now for even touching me!"

The only emotion on Mercury's face was confusion, and as he looked up at the stormy gray eyes contemplating murder, he slowly repeated "touching…?" A quarter of a second later though, his eyes narrowed to slits as he finally caught on to her meaning. "Are you seriously that vain?"

His only response was simple, venomous. "I'll fucking kill you!"

Angrily, both surprised and insulted, Mercury spat back at Ruby "You seriously think I'd even want to … Well, sorry to disappoint you Red, but the idea of raping a malnourished, unconscious patient is a serious turnoff for me. Maybe try again later, and I might be interested."

"I'll fucking-!"

"Ruby!" Mercury yelled, forcing the brunette to pause for a moment. With a cold stare, Mercury added sharply: "I'm not interested."

Ruby gave a snort, still contemplating murder. But something about how obviously offended, and brutally honest, Mercury was made Ruby believe he was being straight with her. So she angrily shoved her arms through her jacket sleeves, and hurried to finish dressing.

Once she was fully clothed, she turned and walked out of the cave, not taking a second to look back. She only gave a tiny sigh when she heard metal clicking off of the stone floor as her ward followed her out into the night.

* * *

"Alright Red, so what are you gonna do now?"

Ruby didn't like walking next to Mercury on the side of the gorge, where he could shove her in the frigid waters bellow at a single moment's notice. Taking a few quick steps, ignoring the flare of pain from her leg, Ruby cut in front of her annoying shadow so that she was now in front of Mercury and walk with her arm sliding across the cavern wall. Raising a hand over her shoulder as though to wave him off, Ruby replied back sarcastically: "which is it Mercury? Am I going to be the Bitch, Ruby, or Red? I'm getting whiplash with all the different names you're throwing at me."

Playfully running a hand through his hair, pulling up next to Ruby, he answered: "I think I'll be flipping back and forth between the set; keep you on your toes… anyway, that's not an answer. What next?"

Ruby didn't hear his question though; she was too lost in thought._ 'He's walking right next to me. I should push him in, before he realizes I could kill him right now. If I kicked him, he wouldn't be able to grab me before I was out of his reach. I need to get rid of him before-'_

"Starship Red: do you copy! Hellooooooooooooo! The hell is up with you?!"

Ruby grimaced, realizing that as they stepped out of the chasm, she missed her chance. '_I'll get more. I need to get rid of him sooner or later. If I can lose him, great. But now, while I can't outrun him, killing him is probably my only option'._

Mercury snapped his fingers in front of the brunette's face, angrily asking: "You bit? You're walking around half-dazed like a clicker. I'm starting to worry you'll turn and jump on me any second!"

Not telling Mercury how close he was to guessing Ruby's thoughts, she snapped back "what?!"

"What are you doing now? Your little friend is dead; I'm curious what the next move for the great 'Ruby Rose' is going to be." Mercury began biting his nails while looking up at the night sky, and over his left thumb he mumbled: "I'm guessing you were heading to Beacon from here… that or the coastline, maybe?"

Ignoring his guesses, Ruby replied back flatly. "Weiss isn't dead."

Mercury froze mid step, and Ruby continued walking forward for another few seconds before she notice his stopping. Turning back to look at him, Ruby saw Mercury's face plastered with a look lost somewhere between infuriated and flabbergasted. Stuttering angrily, Mercury stumbled over his jumbled words angrily as he spoke. "W-w-we came all the way HERE, in the middle of the freaking night! Just so you could double-check me and look for yourself! Even after I told you everything already back in the cave! We didn't see a single trace of her!"

Whirling away from Mercury, Ruby's eyes squinted as the moon suddenly moved out from behind a cloud and shone brightly down on her. Momentarily blinded by the sudden light, she angrily stared up at the sky while hissing: "so I'll just keep looking then!"

Ruby heard a sound of contempt behind her, although she didn't turn back to see whatever judgmental look Mercury was wearing now. Trudging off angrily, the brunette weaved through the tree's following her earlier tracks through the snow as she worked her way back to the cave.

Finishing the nails on his left hand, and transitioning over to his right, Mercury simply scoffed lightly at the limping figure ahead of him, adding under his breath as Ruby walked away: "how did you make it this long if you're that hopeful?"

* * *

Walking back into the cave, whose fire was still going strong, Ruby quickly grabbed her pack off of the ground and threw it over her good shoulder. Bouncing it off her back, Ruby noticed that the bag didn't feel any lighter than usual. Ether that, or the brunette was much weaker than she had been before she had gotten hurt. A quarter of a second later, she heard the sound of Mercury entering the cave behind her as the clicking that usually followed him resonated off the walls.

"How does all that clacking not give you a headache?" Ruby asked the question sourly, her already foul mood even more damped by her bleak prospects at finding her partner.

"What, this?" As Mercury asked, he tapped his heel against the floor, smiling lightly as he did so. "I think of it more as a built-in metronome. Closest thing to an iPod any of us are going to find around here."

"Hmph" Ruby scoffed, finding no amusement in his answer.

Rolling his eyes, Mercury quipped lightly: "are those the only sounds you can make! Groans and grunts! Sheesh, lighten up!" Doing a quick dance, Mercury then joked "I can do a wicked tap-dance in these baby's… if you're at all interested?"

Turning on her heel, squaring up to the smiling Mercury as best she could, Ruby put on her most menacing expression. Holding out her palm face up, the brunette simply growled: "Rifle."

That wiped the smile from Mercury's face instantly, and he stopped for a moment while gauging the face of the brunette in front of her. Ruby thought that she was going to have to fight him for it, and was getting ready to argue with him when he said "behind that ledge over there." He then nodded over to the back corner of the cave, just at the fringe of the lights reach.

Ruby watched him wearily as she strode past her old silver-haired enemy, and just as she exited the light from the fire, the brunette felt her foot connect with something dense and wooden. After a few seconds of scrounging around on the ground, Ruby felt her fingers curl around the worn leather strap of her trusty rifle. And while she always made fun of herself for it, the brunette would be lying if she said the world didn't feel any more bleak when she didn't have her weapon at her side. It had been the same with Crescent Rose, and after all these years, Ruby couldn't say that her unnamed rifle was any less special to her.

Ruby didn't turn around while she picked up her rifle, feeling it hang on its shoulder strap as she straightened up. Because as she began to straighten out, Ruby realized that Mercury had sent her back against a wall, in a corner with nothing to hide behind and nothing to take cover with. She might as well have placed herself in front of the business end of a firing squad. Her mind racing while she stood at the edge of the light, Ruby started freaking out over her situation.

_'I'm a fool for asking for this now! Mercury isn't an idiot; he set this up, and he's been waiting to see if I turn on him the second I get my hands on a weapon. My rifle probably isn't even loaded; he wouldn't be stupid enough to give me a loaded rifle. He just wants to see what I'll do with a weapon. I should just turn around slowly, holding it by the strap, and thank him. I'll get a thousand chances later. Or… maybe I should take the chance? He might have waited for me to be armed before taking me out. He strikes me as the honorable type, although they usually don't make it this long. I should kill him now! But what if I'm wrong and this isn't loaded! Then I'll just be a sitting duck with nothing better than a club to take him on with. But if he is going to… ARGH! There's no way out of this!'_

Turning around slowly while her mind was still reeling, deciding to hold the strap of her rifle away from her body, Ruby turned back to try to thank Mercury. And when Ruby turned to face Mercury, she saw him sitting cross-legged by the fire with his back towards her. He threw another log into the dying blaze while calling back "I'll take first watch!"

Staring at the figure hovering over the fire dumbfounded, Ruby said to herself "he _is_ an idiot…"

* * *

As quietly as she could manage sneaking out with a limp, Ruby shuffled out into the early morning sunlight and away from the cave's mouth. She felt as though she had repaid every one of her debts to Mercury by standing watch over him throughout the night after his shift had ended. She had waited the few hours leading up to dawn, mulling over her choices. As soon as Mercury had fallen asleep the night before, disappearing behind a crevice in the cave that wasn't easy to see, Ruby had checked her rifle. Fully loaded, even with a bullet in the chamber. It was only because of that simply fact, that utterly stupid sign of trust, that the brunette had decided to sneak out at the break of dawn instead of ending his life while he was sleeping.

Ruby quietly began walking towards the tree line, and as she limped away, she couldn't help but feel bad about how she had treated Mercury last night. He had shown no sign of wanting to hurt Ruby, but had instead wasted precious resources trying to save her. And all she had done was plan out killing him all night long, over and over, until she could just run for the hills without him.

Just as she turned around a corner and past the first tree on the fringe of the forest, Ruby had a mini heart attack as a sly voice from her right quipped "hey Red."

"Gah!" As Ruby leapt away from the sound, her pack went flying off of her back and landed in the shallow snow.

"Sheeeeesh, aren't you jumpy" Mercury quipped lightly, half hidden by shadows while leaning against the very same tree that Ruby had walked by while entering the forest!"

"Wha… where… how…" Ruby asked, unable to form a full thought.

"I take walks in the mornings; helps to stay fresh" Mercury lied smoothly, guessing what Ruby was trying to ask. Leaning down and picking up a light grey pack that was sitting in the snow next to his feet, Mercury slung the bag over his shoulder while asking nonchalantly "so, where are we heading?"

"We?! What makes you think I'd want you around?"

Raising an eyebrow, Mercury responded back "my rugged good looks, obviously."

Growling angrily, Ruby stalked off past him, not taking the time to look behind her. Ruby knew without any confirmation that he would follow. "You better not be hoping for some grand adventure, we're going wherever I say, and I don't care what you think!"

Mercury just chuckled lightly as he followed behind her, laughing to himself while saying "I've got nowhere better to be."

* * *

**And now things start to take off again! I hope you liked the chapter, and the new characters it brings! So leave a comment reviewing the chapter if you have the time, critiques are always appreciated and what not. **

**Anyhow, thanks for reading!**


	8. Keep Moving Forward, Just Look First

After four days in the dark, Weiss's eyes had adjusted to the constant gloom that accompanied the dark cramped tunnels she had traveled through. The only source of light for Weiss was the glowing moss that stuck to the tunnel walls, hanging low over the stream like drapes and catching the mist that wafted up from the choppy waters. Those colonies and the occasional moss fire she would make when she wanted to cook a meal.

Singing to herself in her head, Weiss kept her hands in her pockets while kicking along a small, circular puck shaped rock she had found earlier. '_Mirror Mirror, Tell Me Something… Who's The Loneliest Of- Damnit…' _Weiss cursed to herself when the rock that she had been kicking along skipped oddly off the floor, and bounced from her path into the stream running along her right.

"Uhhhh…" Weiss groaned. She could see her rock right there, right on the edge of the water, only a foot below the surface. But something about having to get her hand wet annoyed the blonde, so after a second where she shot daggers at the stream, an inanimate object, she turned and kept walking down the tunnel.

Rolling her shoulder, glad she wasn't as stiff as she had been when she first started walking, the blonde thought to herself on the past four days. Weiss wasn't actually sure how long she had spent underground though. She just guessed it had been four days; the blonde really couldn't be sure. Weiss felt as though she had slept in increments that would add up to four days. But with nothing to do other than just meander down long tunnels, Weiss wasn't sure if she was getting tired out slower than she usually would if she had just walked at Ruby's pace.

Walking through the tunnels, for lack of a better term, was boring. It was mind numbingly boring. Weiss thought to herself at least once a day '_once you see one stalagmite, you've seen them all. Same goes for moss, no matter how it grows.'_ Originally Weiss had been afraid of getting lost. She knew better now. Since she had entered the tunnel back at the bank where she had washed up, Weiss hadn't seen a single deviation in her path. All she did was walk in the direction the river besides her flowed… and walk.

And walk.

And walk.

Weiss had found ways of keeping herself entertained though. She had picked up little knick knacks on her march through the mountain; the oddly shaped rock here, the weird piece of driftwood there. She had nothing to keep in her pack anyways, and Weiss figured the there was no reason to leave it empty. Weiss's favorite trinket she had found along the subterranean trail though, by far, was shoved through a loop on her belt.

It was stupid, but when Weiss had found the long stick, bleached white by however long it had spent in the absence of sunlight, stuck in a crook in the rocks where it was barely poking out of the rushing rapids, Weiss saw the resemblance instantly. Pulling it out of the water while being careful to not scratch the wooden poles surface, Weiss already felt nostalgic. The meter long rod, already the perfect size, even had a pair of knots in the wood right where the pommel and the hilt would have been, although the grip was a little thicker than Myrtenaster's should have been. After scratching M. V. II into the grip where she held the toy sword with a fingernail, Weiss smiled to herself and continued walking along, happily humming to herself over her find.

_'I should get rid of this thing, it's just dead weight,'_ Weiss told herself after she found it. But even as she said that, Weiss knew she wouldn't. While the blonde walked along the beach, which had shifted from large shale slabs to tiny granite pebbles Weiss practiced her fencing against imaginary foes, the makeshift sword kept her entertained against the constant monotony of trudging forward.

It was a good thing that she didn't throw away the stick, because the toy actually proved to be somewhat useful to Weiss. After a few minutes where Weiss had to get the feel of the lighter staff, the blonde sharpened the end of the stick to a reasonably sharp point. Being a master fencer, Weiss found it easy as possible to single out and stab fish out of the shallow waters along the stream. The fish were bland, small, and tasted absolutely horrible after Weiss cooked them in the moss fire on little sticks the blonde made into spits that she had found along the bank. But they kept her fed.

Sitting cross-legged in front of a new moss fire, Weiss watched as the second fish she had caught cooked over the fire in the acrid smelling flames. Picking at her teeth with a finger nail, knowing she would be absolutely appalled by her behavior if someone saw her doing that, Weiss wondered if she would actually eat the second fish she had caught, or save it for later. Weiss was battling between her intense hunger and her sense of disgust. The last fish Weiss had eaten definitely tasted horrible, but the three-inch long fish didn't do much to fill even someone as small as Weiss up. But Weiss wasn't sure if she would be able to even keep another one of those rotten little bottom feeders down, the way her stomach was tossing.

Guessing that the fish was done after its scales had turned from their original whitish yellow to brownish red, Weiss pulled the spit out of her fire and stared at the fish for a few seconds. '_Well… If I feel hungry, it's because I need more food'._ And against her own better judgement, Weiss bit off a small chunk from the fish and unhappily ate as much of the meat as she could, groaning to herself silently as she felt slimy bits of bottom feeder slide down her throat and land in her stomach like rocks.

Finished and left with only a skeleton and a fish head on her wooden spike, Weiss looked the dead fish in the eye for a second before flicking the entire spit back into the stream on her right. Watching dispassionately as the skeleton of her meal floated down the stream and was carried out of sight, Weiss sighed and lied down while putting her hands behind her neck.

_'Maybe I'll find my way out tomorrow…,' _Weiss thought silently as she slowly drifted off into a light slumber.

* * *

Waking up again, only the cool green light visible, Weiss picked herself up off the cave floor and started her march again. She didn't feel need to check her fire; Weiss wouldn't care if she lit this whole mountain range on fire, as long as she wasn't caught in the blaze. But after the thought of running from a blazing inferno as the fire burned the colonies of moss clinging to the wall crossed through her mind, Weiss back tracked to her old fire and made sure that her old campsite was indeed put out.

"Better safe than sorry," Weiss mumbled to herself as she kicked the blacked heap of ashes into the river, watching as the crumbled strands of lichen dissolved in the water and left swirling trails of ash to drift down the stream.

Turning back around and continuing her marathon, Weiss imagines slaying Grimms and enemy huntsmen with her toy sword as she heard her boots crunch against the pebble beach she had been walking along. She may have looked like a fool to anyone watching, but to Weiss, the blonde was proud of defeating three beowolves and an ursa singlehandedly. Twirling the spear in her hands like a baton, Weiss thought to herself '_I feel more like Pyrrha than myself with this thing…'_

Still, that wasn't too bad a comparison. Weiss had always respected Pyrrha's ability, although the blonde also joked to herself that the champion's tastes in men left something to be desired. But Pyrrha had been another individual at the top of the food chain at Beacon, almost coming close to herself and-

"Nope… not going down that road yet," Weiss muttered out loud, already knowing where that train of thought would leave her stranded at. Over the past however many days she had spent stranded in the dark, Weiss had learned to avoid that topic. Sure she had been strong, brave and full of resolve while she was marching towards her doom on the night she had woken up, but that phase had passed quickly. After her judgment wasn't so mind numbingly clouded by pain, the blonde found that every time she thought of… a certain individual, she was immobilized by guilt. The last time she thought of her old partner, Weiss had been stuck rooted to the spot for a good ten minutes. And in the end, she didn't even come to some sort of terms with the event. No, the blonde just shook her head as though she had been stung by a bee, and stumbled along down the path at a faster pace. So Weiss just kept walking, away from what had led her here in the first place.

If Weiss had been taller, traveling through the tunnels would have been really inconvenient. Even at her short height, Weiss often had to walk with her head down while she was making progress through the tunnels. Anyone taller would have had to walk with their knees bent awkwardly while they made the trek.

After a few hours of walking, where the tunnel continued to go on its perfectly straight path, Weiss couldn't take it anymore.

"Uh… this is so boring!" Weiss complained to herself as she walked along, running her hands through her long hair in frustration. Playing with her staff had lost all of its appeal after her victory over the beowolves, and her imagination couldn't think up a better scenario than that on her own. Weiss simply wasn't that creative.

At first, Weiss thought she heard some weird scratching noise as she pulled at her hair, thinking that she might have scratched her scalp with her long fingernails. But when the noise continued even after Weiss stopped, the blonde's eyes lit up as she realized something. She heard a deep rumbling up ahead, the sound of water hitting air. If she heard water hitting the air, that meant that the river she had been following for the past few days had finally ended. And if it had ended, that meant it had finally let out somewhere.

Picking up the pace, Weiss started to rush forward towards the sound at a brisk jog. At first the sound was only a slight rumble, and as Weiss rushed towards the sound she felt the air almost humming from the sound. After a few hundred feet though, the rumble had switched to be more of a crashing thunder, and Weiss could feel the ground beneath her feet shaking. Weiss could see the tunnel opening up, and towards the end, which was covered in drapes of moss, it looked as though there was actual…

"Sunlight," Weiss sighed happily as she began to run forward, unable to see anything other than patches of yellow light through the hanging drapes of green that blocked the end of the tunnel. Without slowing down, Weiss swept the drapes away with a hand and moved out of her tunnel with a smile on her face, happy to finally be out of that cramped passageway. And when Weiss stepped through the glowing curtain, she found herself hanging in the air over what must have been at least a hundred foot drop.

"DUST!"

Without even thinking, Weiss flailed her arms out, attempting to grab anything to keep herself from falling. Her hand caught on a particularly thick piece of lichen, which she had only just swept back. Falling a few feet, Weiss felt her body slam into the slick wall below her tunnels drop off as she hung from the piece of moss by one hand. Using all of her upper body strength, Weiss tried pulling herself up and back into the tunnel she had just fallen out of by her one free hand, the other still clinging to the moss. Once she got a strong hold, Weiss pulled herself up to the cliff and into the tunnel, rolling herself back in.

Lying on her back and panting from the rush of adrenaline she had just gotten, Weiss scolded herself._ 'I'm an idiot, I knew that there as a waterfall up ahead. That was lucky, and I should have died from that…' _Rolling over and getting on her hands and knees, Weiss looked over the edge of the cliff, this time being careful not to fall off.

When Weiss leaned over the edge and peered through the veil of moss, her heart sank. Weiss had assumed the sunlight she had seen was actual outdoors, and that she was finally out of the mountain. Instead, looking down at the hundred something foot drop, Weiss just saw more cave. Looking up at the ceiling, Weiss could see dozens of cracks in the top of the caverns ceiling, letting in forked cracks of light. Through one Weiss could actually see the sun, hanging high in the sky against a perfect blue background.

Looking down though, Weiss had to tackle her next biggest issue. The massive cavern Weiss had found herself hanging over reminded the blonde of the cave that she had first landed herself in. But this cave was much larger. Almost five hundred feet across and with a large, semicircular pool against the wall that Weiss was hanging out from, the bottom of the cave was dotted with dozens of small caves and even more tunnels, leading who knows where. Three different waterfalls, all pouring out of the walls at different heights, fed into the pool at the bottom of the pit.

Looking down from her perch, Weiss weighed her options. '_I can't go back; it'll take me three days to get back to that other pit… plus I'll have just wasted my time going in a circle. But the only thing stupider than not watching where you're going is to leap into water that might only be two feet deep.'_ Looking at the sides of the cave walls, Weiss saw no way to climb down the slick surface without professional climbing gear. So really, there was only one way to go down… quickly.

Picking a spot that looked safe, Weiss decided she might as well test where she was aiming for first. Rolling her toy sword in between her hands a few times, hoping this would work, Weiss lifted the sword above her head and threw it like a javelin into the pond below. Straight as an arrow, Weiss's makeshift spear sailed through the air and disappeared under the surface of the black pool of water. And then Weiss waited, counting the seconds.

After a few moments, Weiss thought to herself: '_Did my stick get stuck in the soil of the lake… if it did, that spot is definitely not deep enou-"_

But suddenly the stick resurfaced, only ten seconds after Weiss had thrown the staff, floating lazily sideways on the surface of the water. '_Damnit… I mean, I guess that's a good thing, but… ah hell, no reason to put it off now I guess!'_

Trying to not think about what she was doing, Weiss pulled off most of her clothes and stuffed them into her backpack, leaving herself in only her underwear again. '_I don't like how often this is happening,'_ Weiss joked to herself nervously, hefting her backpack over her shoulder and feeling its weight.

Mumbling to herself "lets hope this works…," Weiss practiced swinging the pack back and forth, guessing how she should let go of it to have it land on the closest shoreline, away from the lake to keep her clothes dry. Rocking back and forth with the motion, Weiss swung the backpack as fast as she could, letting go of it at what she hoped would send it sailing to the shore. For a moment, it looked as though it would make it, but a half second later the bag landed on the pebble shore, and bounced once before landing with a solid thud safe and dry on the edge of the subterranean lake.

_'Alright, easy part done... Now I've got to go get it.'_

Taking a few steps back from the jumping point, hoping up and down on the balls of her feet nervously for a second, Weiss steeled herself and ran towards the cliff before she had the chance to chicken out. Even as she ran, her nerves still yelled at her to stop. But while her nerves screamed at her no, a moronic, crooked grin split across Weiss's face. '_I can't even remember the last time I did something this stupid!'_

Weiss felt herself enter the air a second later, and now that she was at the point of no return, Weiss actually felt excited as she fell. Dropping like a stone next to the waterfall, looking down at the foaming waters below her, Weiss actually gave out a single screaming laugh of excitement as she fell.

Only a few seconds after she jumped off the cliff edge, Weiss landed in the lake below. Crashing through the surface of the lake, Weiss plunged down into the water, and as she sunk down Weiss heard her ears squeak at the sudden change in pressure. Looking up through the water Weiss swam towards the spots of light on the lakes surface, the swirling waters from the waterfall pushing her upwards faster. After a few seconds, Weiss broke through the surface and found herself floating on top of the lake, letting go of her held breath. For a few seconds she just floated their quietly, listening to the thunder of the waterfall, feeling stray droplets land heavily on the top of her head.

And when the gravity of the situation finally made it to her, Weiss started laughing manically, hearing the high-pitched peal ring off the cave walls. Sighing to herself, Weiss complained: "why can't I do that again…"

* * *

Finding the shore of the lake and walking out of the water, Weiss smiled while she thought about accomplishing something so stupid. "I guess that went well," the blonde mused to herself while wringing out her hair and trying to shake the water out of her ears.

Talking to herself, letting herself bask in the pride of her success, Weiss muttered: "I don't think I would have been able to do something like that if… if Ruby was hear." Instead of freezing up though like she usually did, Weiss laughed to herself. "Ruby probably would have spent a solid week making a rope out of the moss in the cave, and even then made a few spares to be safe."

Finding her pack on the shoreline and pulling on her clothes, Weiss began to feel her adrenaline seeping away. Still, it was hard to get rid of her smile, and while she walked over fully dressed to her old stick Weiss couldn't shake her feeling of euphoria. Weiss was closer to wherever she was going, that was certain.

As she leaned down to pick up her toy sword, which had washed ashore in a patch of light on the edge of the lake, Weiss saw a shadow pass overhead as the light she was standing in changed shape for a second. Picking up her spear and her neck snapping up, looking at the ceiling of the cave, Weiss saw another shadow pass over the gap and blocking the light from the sun for a second.

_'Probably just some birds or an animal passing over my head_ Weiss thought to herself'. Still smiling, Weiss looked back down the cave walls, checking the different paths she was going to take, seeing if any took her fancy.

What she saw whipped the smile off of her face instantly.

Directly in front of her, seeming to blend in with the shadows, a mass of black fur seemed to be rusting against the already liquid black background. Both black and grey, the shape seemed to be lumbering out of one of the larger tunnels, large white claws clicking against the floor. Weiss stared frozen in horror as she saw, for the first time in almost ten years… a Grimm.

It was obvious the Grimm was old, centuries old, maybe even older than parts of this mountain. Weiss had heard stories of Grimm that had turned grey with age, who had evaded hunters and huntresses for centuries. As the beowolf lumbered out into the cave and stopped by the edge of the lake, lapping up water with a forked black tongue, Weiss stood frozen in fear, not sure if the beast was uninterested in killing her, or simply unaware of her presence.

Standing totally still, almost shaking out of her clothes in sheer terror, Weiss's thought's screamed at the beast. '_Please be blind! Please be blind! Please be blind! Please be blind, deaf, dumb, everything that would make it so that I get to not be eaten. I want to live!'_

Almost as though it heard her thoughts, the creature's eyes snapped up, and through its bone mask red eyes stared down the pure white figure standing in front of it.

Weiss couldn't do anything, and for those few seconds where the two starred each other down, Weiss just swallowed loudly and wondered in her head: '_how did one of you even-'_

Cut off though, unable to finish her though, a sudden, ear-splitting roar came from the beowolf in front of her. Weiss didn't take a second to see what that meant. Weiss had fought hundreds of grimms during her years of training along her partners. She knew what that call mean.

It wanted her in pieces. Weiss knew was going to die, unless she escaped.

Back peddling, nearly tripping over her own two feet, Weiss turned and ran as fast as she could away from the beast. She heard the Grimm's great roar as it chased her down, gaining speed on her faster than she was creating distance between them. Without even checking to see if it went anywhere, Weiss threw herself head first into a small crack in the wall, the closest and only place to hide. Barely squeezing through, Weiss stumbled back against a wall; one about ten feet back from where she entered the cave.

For a few seconds it was silent, and Weiss strained to hear anything over the sound of her own heart pounding in her chest. She could barely see in her small crack in the wall, and feeling around, she didn't feel any way out. It felt as though there was nothing around, and as Weiss spread her arms out, she started to feel claustrophobic as she realized the space she was in couldn't have been larger than six feet tall and two feet wide. But at least she was safe. Hidden in the perfect darkness while looking out, Weiss didn't see any grimms. It seemed as though the one chasing her had just vanished. Thinking to herself optimistically, she asked herself '_Maybe I hit my head when I landed in the water?'_

But as if to prove her wrong, suddenly a red eye surrounded by white bone appeared in front of her and stared at where she was hidden. Weiss's breath caught in her throat as she looked out in horror at the beowolf, who stared back with what could only be described as insane rage. Giving out a blood curdling roar, the beowolf began to reach into the hole Weiss had backed into, clawing at the heiress, attempting to rip her out and into the open where he could finish her.

Weiss screamed as she backed up as far as she could into hole, pressing her back against the cold stone wall behind her. The beowolf clawed furiously at the caves entrance, leaving inch wide and three-inch deep gouges in the stone where it raked its claws at the walls and floor. Biting at the cave's entrance as well, ripping off great chunks of stone, Weiss watched in horror as it's long arm only missed her by a foot. Clawing at the air in front of her, the beowolf stared Weiss down with a look of pure malice while it continued to try to catch its meal.

Weiss was a rabbit in a burrow, and the beowolf in front of her was a hungry fox. She wasn't going anywhere…

* * *

**So, I'm not really going to talk about the story. I don't have much to say about it other than I liked it, and that I hope you did too****. Maybe leave a review, let me know what you think... But anyway, that's not important today.**

** What I am going to talk about though, is a certain awesome individual. You all see the new cover page right? An awesome writer on the site named legacy23 drew that. It's awesome! I love it! I saw his pm to me just as I was putting this up, and I had to change the cover and wait, because I just wanted everybody it see it. It's so cool! You guys should go check out his page on fanfiction, and once your done there go from there to his Deviant Art account. He has drawn some really cool things.**

**Thanks for reading, and I'll be back soon. Things are really picking up, huh?**


	9. Familiarizing

"Uhhhhhh… this is boring as hell," Mercury complained as he trudged along behind Ruby across the dead grass that covered the mountain path the two were taking.

Ruby ignored his complaining and continued walking. He usually shut up after a few minutes of whining.

Veering in front of the brunette, placing himself in front of her so that she couldn't ignore him, Mercury growled: "come on Red, we walk for hours on end, through the boring snow and woods, and you just stare ahead dully as though you're wearing blinders." Shaking his head lightly, Mercury sighed sadly. "No way to live Red, no way to live…"

Coughing lightly, using her voice for the first time in a few hours, Ruby ducked under his eagle spread arms and answered back: "If I had known you complain this much before I brought you with me, I would have shot you in the knee so that you couldn't follow me around."

"Pfff, you wouldn't… right?" When Ruby didn't answer him and just continued walking along ahead of him, Mercury froze and stared off after the hooded figure in front of him, before calling forward again. "You wouldn't right Red?!"

* * *

Over the last two days of traveling together, both Ruby and Mercury had gotten a feel for the other. And Mercury had realized he was going to be pretty much as bored with his new companion as when he had been on his own. Ruby didn't do anything. She didn't say anything. And even when she did, the conversations didn't last long. Ruby just walked forward with her palm wrapped around the strap of her gun, her knuckles white as she gripped the rough cord of leather tightly while she walked along.

"There isn't anybody out here, you don't need to be so high-strung." Mercury hummed while walking behind Ruby, rolling his shoulders to warm up his arms against the blisteringly cold winds of the mountain air. While either one of them would have been overjoyed at the melting of the snow on the side of the mountain that they were walking across, they still had to contend with the frigid mountain winds whipping past them at over thirty miles an hour. Sometimes the winds would be so strong that the gusts would pick up dust and bits of the freshly uncovered soil, flinging the debris it into their eyes.

"Yeah, I thought that too a little bit ago… I ended up getting shot, nearly killed, and stuck with you! I think I'm going to stay careful."

"Your call, but that group of bandits was the only other group of people besides myself out here, and now that they're gone I don't really see the point in worrying over anybody else…"

Actually curious for once, Ruby turned around, pulling her rifle of off her shoulder and sating down on a patch of uncovered dirt in one smooth motion, signaling to take a break. Patting the brown earth in front of her, as if telling Mercury where to sit, she asked: "so how did you know that they were here then?"

Instead of the spot the redhead had patted in front of her, Mercury sat down directly next to Ruby, who immediately scooted a foot away in response, and answered: "I've stayed in these ranges for the last few months. I kept my nose to the ground; anybody who knew what to look for would have just known when they showed up."

"Ooooh, mountain man Mercury, how exciting!" Finished mocking him, Ruby asked nonchalantly: "So… why didn't you take care of them then, just get rid of them? They seemed to be pretty dangerous…"

Mercury snapped back sarcastically: "Gee, wonder where you got that from?" After he got smacked on the back of the head, he grumbled sourly "I just didn't want to deal with them!"

"You still have magic; you would have been _just fine_!"

"So you say! I'm not going to pick a fight when I can just skirt around it, avoiding confrontation and what not!"

"Still though, you saved me." Ruby didn't say it in a kind way, or in a thankful way. She stated it as more of an annoying fact, like how a person eats ten spiders a year while they slept. "Why'd you change your philosophies, Mr. High and Mighty?!"

"You know, you still haven't thanked me for that yet…" Mercury sighed lightly, already knowing that he wasn't going to get a thank you any time soon, especially if he asked. Answering enigmatically he said: "I didn't really care for their tactics to be honest…"

Ruby's face scrunched up at that answer, and asked "what do you mean by that?"

"I don't know… It seemed kind of underhanded to sneak up on two women when you outnumber them by a-freaking-lot, and have a dozen attack dogs to boot." Mercury slumped over, putting his elbows on his knees and resting his chin on a fist. "I probably would have helped you guys anyway, but when I saw them sneaking up on you two from afar… well, it was the straw that broke the camel's back."

"You count what you did as saving me?! You left me, shot and bleeding out, to deal with all the bandits. Then you swoop in at the last second and catch that last guy off guard, and you call that a rescue mission?" Ruby flopped down on her back, letting her arms lie out on either side of her body. The ground wasn't hard, but It definitely wasn't as comfortable as lying in the snow would have been. Squirming slightly, trying to find a more comfortable positions while looking up at the sky, the brunette grumbled bitterly from the ground: "I wouldn't consider that a successful rescue mission… to me it seems more like you waiting until the real fight's over and swooping in to look like the dashing hero at the end."

Looking at Mercury from her rough patch of soil in the dead grass, she could see the silver-haired villain's shoulders tense up. In a tone that seemed to be a little too level, Mercury asked: "how many where there Ruby?"

Smirking, she answered back from the ground: "Uh, six… myself killing five, I'd say I handled eight-ish percent of the fighting." Raising her foot and patting Mercury on the back with the sole of her shoe, Ruby added in a mocking voice: "Still, I'm proud of my little Mercky for doing so well."

Sighing heavily, Mercury looked back and snapped at the redhead. "First, it would be eighty three percent, and I swear to god you call me Mercky again and I'll shiv you!"

Raising her hands off the ground and into the air, Ruby quipped back: "Whoa, my bad! Mr. Maths over here is going to school me on my arithmetic! Tell me Mr. Calculator, what do you-"

"Eleven."

Annoyed at being cut off, Ruby asked bitterly "what?"

Sneering forward, not looking back at the girl who was still resting her feet on his back, Mercury repeated. "Eleven. There were eleven bandits." Turning around, smiling mockingly at Ruby, he added "and by Mr. Maths calculations, that would put you at a weak forty five percent." Rising smoothly, almost forcing Ruby to flip head over heels as her feet were suddenly lifted into the air as he stood up, he dusted off his black cargo pants while adding slyly: "still, I'm proud of my little Rosy for doing so well."

Ruby, who was still lying on the ground and glaring at Mercury through her two legs that were still hanging in the air, snapped back: "screw you!" Unfolding herself and rolling of the ground, starting to heal from her wounds and regain some of her former grace, Ruby snatched her rifle off the ground next to her and began stalking off, not waiting for Mercury to follow. He'd catch up eventually.

* * *

After walking for a few more hours in silence, only punctured by Mercury's deep sighs that were obviously only meant to dig at the brunette, Ruby couldn't take it anymore.

"Would you **shut the FUCK UP!?**"

Incredulous, slightly taken aback by the sudden outroar, Mercury answered: "I've 'shut the fuck up' for hours. I'm starting to get sick of this Red. I used to talk way more than I've talked since I joined up with you!" Thinking of it as an afterthought, he added sourly "and that was to myself!"

"Gahhhh…" Ruby hissed, making a sound of utter contempt in the back of her throat. "I warned you before you came along that it wouldn't be fun traveling together!" Snorting angrily, the brunette hissed: "Fine then! I'll think of something to talk about if it really bugs you so much, walking in the nice peace and quiet."

"Um… I don't think that's how a conversation works Red. I guess you're kinda rusty on them, but usually one person just makes an offhand comment, and the other person say somethi-"

"Quiet!"

"Uh… whatever Red."

Ruby stopped for a second, her eyes roving all over Mercury's long, lean body. Ruby thought that if there was a conversation somewhere, it's topic would probably be with Mr. Narcissist. He was decently well muscled, at least more so than anybody else she had seen in a while. If she had to guess, Ruby would probably say it had something to do with still having a semblance. It was easier to stay fit when you were literally overflowing with energy. But what Ruby had wondered about the most came to mind when her eyes rested on Mercury's face.

Ruby's voice became genuinely curious when she asked: "So what's the deal with the constant clean shave? I've been with you for… three-ish days, and I haven't even seen five o'clock shadow on you yet. What gives?"

Ruby raised an eyebrow at Mercury, who suddenly looked very sheepish. "Ah… no reason I guess… I just shave in the morning" Mercury answered shiftily, scratching the back of his head, refusing to make eye contact with Ruby.

In a sing-song voice Ruby trilled "every day! Boy, must that get annoying!" Giving him a crooked smile, Ruby fluttered her eyelashes and asked: "Why?"

"Eh…" was his only response, although he followed afterwards by adding meekly: "I just like the look."

Ruby suddenly shot an arm out and stopped Mercury, who thudded into her outstretched arm. Looking over at Mercury, the brunette gave him a wicked smile and sang: "Liiiiiiiiar!"

Giving Ruby a withering look, he answered back in a flustered voice that didn't match his face: "Red, give it a rest, sheesh!"

A smile broke out across Ruby's face; she had a feeling this would be good. "Spill it!"

"Nah… We can go back to walking in si-"

"SPILL IT!"

"Uhh… well…" Mercury made a few hand gestures as though he was trying to sign to Ruby what he didn't want to say before slumping inward and sighing with a defeated tone: "I just can't grow a beard… or any facial hair rea-."

"Ha! Seriously!"

Groaning, Mercury put a hand on his face and simply replied "yep."

"Come on, there has to be more than that!"

"What else is there to say? I get this crappy silvery peach fuzz on my lip at best, so I just shave that off every few days when it starts growing back." Looking over at the brunette, who's limps were mashed together trying to not laugh, Mercury cried out "come on Red, it's not funny!"

That was what did it. That aghast look on Mercury's face while trying to convince Ruby to let the conversation die finally set her off. Keeling over, Ruby actually started laughing, more at Mercury's response than his actual message. Tears started streaming down her face as she tried to get that image out of her mind, of Mercury's crestfallen face pleading with her to stop. Mercury scowled at Ruby, who had actually started snorting how hard she was laughing. Chuckling to herself, Ruby laughed while whipping away tears that immediately came back, mumbling: "that's great!"

"Gah…" Mercury growled, punching Ruby in the arm.

Ruby turned aside for a second, stunned, until she looked at Mercury's face and saw his lips split wide in a grin smiling down at her. After a half second moment of hesitation, Ruby smiled lightly and punched him back just as hard, although she may have overdone it a little after he yelped and started massaging his arm where she hit him.

Ruby still didn't like Mercury. She found him worrisome, reckless and dangerous. She had known people with his personality before, and they always drug down every person they ran into before self-destructing themselves. Him surviving this long only meant that the meltdown that finally caught up with him at the end would be extremely cataclysmic.

But there was something magnetic about him too. Something that made her not listen to sense and leave him behind, now that she would be fine on her own. Ruby knew it was stupid, but she found him easy to talk to. Almost as easy as Weiss.

And that just barely made him worth keeping around… for now.

* * *

Walking along, the pair descended down a slope in the mountain that led to a deep ravine between two peeks. Ruby didn't want to admit it, but as she walked along the brunette couldn't help but feel claustrophobic as the majority of the sky was sealed away by the mountains on each side.

Mercury was, for lack of a manlier term, bubbling with excitement as he hopped along next to Ruby. As his more somber partner trudged along next to him, Mercury hummed excitedly. "We're going to be out of these mountains! One more day or so of this walking, and then we'll be out! Done! Finito!"

"Sure sure, let's hope you're right."

"Sheesh Red, a little enthusiasm! This may have been a week long trek for you, but for me it's been a season long setting! I'm dying to get out of the cold; I can't wait to feel my feet again!"

Ruby rolled her eyes while she listened to the man next to her sing under his breath 'I'm so excited', and was so distracted by Mercury that she barely noticed the giant gouge in the earth in front of them. But she did, fortunately, and Ruby put out an arm to stop Mercury, who would have fallen through the inky black rift in the ground if he hadn't been stopped.

Smacking into Ruby's hand and still almost falling in, Mercury whistled and hummed a thanks to Ruby. Hopping over the gap and turning back to Ruby, he extended a hand and regally joked "malady, if you would ever so kindly give me the honor?"

Ruby upturned her nose to the offer, and hopped over the gap without his help, although her back foot did almost slip into the inky void.

Looking around, seeing dozens of cracks in the ground around them, Ruby asked: "what's with the ground here?"

"You never paid attention during you're geography lessons did you Red?"

Rolling her eyes, Ruby sighed, "so you don't know either." She knew Mercury had a better understanding of what was going on than she did, although she knew it would be easier to trick the answer out of him than to just ask.

Obviously it worked, because Mercury suddenly responded. "This mountain range was once a giant chain of volcanoes. Well, it still is technically, although one hasn't erupted in over a thousand years." Scratching at the ground with the tip of his boot, he mumbled absentmindedly "sometimes air pockets would form and create bubble shaped caves near the surface. We're probably standing on top of one right now."

Ruby's face went white, and suddenly looking down at the ground, back to Mercury, then down at the ground again, and then back up at Mercury, she rushed out "let's continue this conversation when we're not on top of a pit of doom…"

"Relax Red; you see those gouges over there in the stone?" Pointing off a few feet two their right, Mercury's finger leveled at a pair of parallel lines in the ground.

"Yes… and?"

"Old cart marks, back before we had things like trolley systems and airships to get across these mountains. If over glorified wheelbarrows could go from one side of the mountain range to the other carrying over a half ton of materials across this ground, then two travelers who together don't break two fifty will be perfectly fine."

"I'm not risking my life because some idiots with funny hats did it!"

"But come on Ru-" Mercury suddenly cut off, a rebuttal on his tongue. Both Ruby and Mercury's head's snapped off to their right when they heard the sounds of screaming coming towards them. Angry, insane screams just off the beaten path.

Mercury took a step forward and stood defensively in front of Ruby. It was a slight gesture, barely noticeable to anybody who wouldn't have been keyed into that sort of thing. But it didn't slip by the brunette. '_You want to take the lead and face whatever is coming our way? Fine by me if you want to be stupid…'_

Suddenly, wheeling out from behind a wall, another person burst out in front of them. It- he, the way the person was dressed made it obvious it was a he- stumbled in circles madly for a second as it ran out towards the center of the ravine's path. Whirling around, the man's gaze finally landed on the two hunters, who were watching wearily as the obviously infected man whirled around angrily. Bellowing at the pair in an animal rage, the man began barreling towards the two without thought or planning.

Mercury stepped forward smoothly, and once the man was within range, Mercury easily struck out with his leg and knocked the infected off its feet. The man landed on his back with one of his arms trapped below his torso, and a half second after he landed with a thud Mercury stood on top of the man's stomach with a knee dug into the infected's chest while pinning the creature's other hand with his right leg in a perfect wrestling move.

Kneeling on top of the infected, looking down on the creature's gross, deformed face, Mercury called back quietly to Ruby and mumbled: "Hey Red, what would you call one of these guys?"

Ruby walked forward next to Mercury , her knife already drawn, and answered absentmindedly: "Infected. That's what they are…"

"Hmmm…Emerald and I used to call them stalkers. I don't remember which one of us coined the term, it just fit." Mercury twisted his head from side to side, looking down on the thing below him. "Hey Red…" he began, before trailing off.

"What?"

Mercury looked up at Ruby and asked, in a tone that almost seemed as though the question was coming from a child. "Is this guy alive?"

Ruby froze for a second, just as she was preparing to bring a knife down into the writhing figure's temple, before really looking at the infected's face for the first time.

It was a grisly sight. He really looked fine, for the most part. His clothes were a little wrinkled, his jeans were ripped, and his shoes looked as though they were ready to fall off of his feet any second. If somebody had looked at just his clothes, he would seem just fine. He looked just like any other survivor, dressed for protection against the winter cold.

But the second a person looked at any uncovered part of his body, that statement would quickly change. His hands were bloody and his fingernails were jagged, the one hand that was only pinned under Mercury's knee at the elbow was still reaching upwards and clawing at the person sitting on the infected chest. And his head was something out of a horror movie. Crisscrossed with ruddy brown lines from dried blood that had poured from his eyes, nose, mouth and ears, his face was rippled and covered with bulges as mushrooms were obviously beginning to sprout under his skin. And on the right side of his face, most horrific of all, little orange half-disk shaped fungi, just like the kind seen growing from rotting tree trunks in the forest covered his face and ripped up the man's stark black hair.

Ruby watched with a disgusted face as the creature still pinned under Mercury snapped up at the silver-haired man sitting on its chest. "I'd give that question a hard 'no' as an answer."

"But why?" Looking back and forth, Mercury commented apathetically. "He's not dead yet, at least not biologically." Sneering down now, as if angry at this total stranger for even thinking of getting infected, Mercury's entire persona changed as he suddenly spat: "He's still just as weak as we are. His bite won't kill us yet. And he wouldn't survive getting shot in the lungs or spine like a clicker would. He'd die just like one of us." Before Ruby knew what Mercury was doing, she suddenly saw his fist smash into the clean side of the infected's face.

"He could die from blood loss!"

Smash

"He could die from drowning!"

Smash

Ruby saw as he pulled his hand back, getting ready to hit the infected underneath him again, a trail of blood trailed between Mercury's fist and the creature's face, although she couldn't tell where it started from. Trying to grab Mercury's hand, Ruby ordered the silver-haired villain in front of her "Mercury, stop! You're hurting yourself!" But Mercury just shook off the brunette's grip, and brought his fist down again.

"He could burn alive!"

Smash

"He could starve!"

Smash

"**Mercury**!"

For a half second Mercury's eyes flashed up, and over his shoulder he snapped: "Shut it Red!" Mercury brought his fist down one, two, three more times, before finally spitting down at the monster below him. "So why doesn't he count as alive then?"

Ruby stood there silently, unsure of what to say. She had never thought about these people, before they were actual clickers. They were the monsters that had actually killed the most people. "I… I don't know."

Mercury reached back with his bloody hand, on which Ruby could see white bone as his beating had torn the flesh of his knuckles away, and pulled out from his back pocket a small dagger. Shoving its point through the stalkers temple, Mercury's eyes flashed angrily as he saw the light pass from the infected's eyes. Getting up off the corpse, pulling his knife out of the creature's head and wiping it off on the dead grass below the creature, Mercury almost stabbed himself in the side as he shoved his knife into his back pocket again.

Frozen silent, Ruby was surprised when she actually felt concern for Mercury. That quickly faded away when Mercury whirled around and she saw the fire in his eyes. Seeing the look on Mercury's face, it was the first time Ruby was ever actually afraid of her traveling companion.

Pointing at Ruby with his bloody hand, either ignoring or oblivious to the pain, Mercury spat: "I don't know what's with you Red! But whatever it is I'm getting sick of it! You know, sometimes you _are actually_ fun to hang around with!"

The brunette started replying, saying: "alright, great, but your hand-", but was quickly cut off by a gesture from Mercury.

"_Sometimes_ you're fun! Other times you're a god damn misery!" Mercury sneered at Ruby, spitting his words angrily at her. "I don't know what your problem is, and I really don't want to know. I can probably guess from the way you reacted when you woke up." Putting his hands to his sides, he angrily huffed "and I am sorry for whatever happened. Don't get me wrong there. Maybe it was Blake, or your sister, or maybe it was your little girlfriend. Maybe it was even you!"

After a second to let that sink in, he added his final statement bitterly. "But I honestly don't care. Get over yourself, because I cannot stand talking to you while your stuck festering over whatever old wounds from the past you're still ripping open!"

Ruby stuttered for a second, blanching at Mercury's harsh tone. "I... I'm not-"

"I don't care!" Snapping at the brunette, Mercury began turning away from the brunette while calling over his shoulder. "Just figure out whatever you need to figure out , or swear to god we'll each go our separate ways after we're out of these mountains. I don't want to be around you if you stay... stay like this!" And with that, Mercury whirled on his heel and stalked off.

And for the first time, Mercury stormed off and Ruby was forced to follow behind in his shadow.

* * *

A few hours later, neither of the two had broken the silence that had started since the afternoon's incident. Sitting silently around a crackling fire, who's cheery light somehow seemed to make the air's mood even more palpably dim, Mercury and Ruby sat silently, wondering who would take first watch.

Mercury sat silently, twisting his hand in the fire's light and admiring his handiwork. Ruby had watched him work, and she would have been lying if she said watching the silver-haired man's semblance hadn't been fascinating. Mercury had just stuck his hand out in front of him, and stared angrily at his hand while a soft silver sheen seemed to encompass his entire forearm. To Ruby, it didn't really look as though he was healing his hand, it looked more like he was pushing back time. As hand slowly healed and the skin over his knuckles stitched back together, even the blood from the infected vanished from his hand.

Sitting cross-legged across the fire, Ruby cleared her throat and said: "I'll take first watch."

Mercury just grunted, and flopped onto his back and stared up at the stars, still running his right hand's fingers over the knuckles on his left.

Ruby was going to leave it at that, but something had been chewing at the back of her mind for the past few hours, since the silver haired man's explosion earlier. "Mercury…"

After a heavy sigh, a bored voice drifted over to Ruby, dully asking: "yeah...?"

"Thanks." Shifting uncomfortably, not entirely sure what to say, Ruby reiterated. "Thanks…I don't know, thanks for saving me a few days ago I guess."

While she couldn't see his face, the brunette could hear the smile in his voice when Mercury answered: "it's not a problem Red. Not a problem at all."

* * *

**So, another chapter, another author's note. Follow, favorite, that sort of thing. Don't really have much to say, although I changed the authors note once because it was way too long.**

**So thanks, and I'll be updating again soon!**

**(Future me again! I tried to keep the story as close to what I had originally written as I edited from chapter one to here. I don't think it's fair to change things too much... Anyway, interesting remark more for myself than for anybody else, but this is the last chapter where I was constantly finding the horrifying grammar error with my dialogue... and now that I look, it's probably where I take a big step up in skill. I start sounding a little bit better to myself from here on. Still not great, but better. That, and the chapter lengths really start ramping up past this point... probably had something to do with it.)**


	10. Accusations On Both Sides

The next morning, descending down the mountain slope, the pair were actually in good spirits as they saw the Forever Fall forest on the edge of the horizon. It's iconic pink and purple tree leaves blended in with the horizon of the rising sun, and both Ruby and Mercury took heart knowing that they would hopefully be walking among those trees before the sun set. Walking forward, Ruby and Mercury were happily joking, the conversation flicking back and forth from topic to topic on a total whim. And while from a distance it may have seemed as though they were just lightheartedly commenting on the weather, if someone got close they would realize how tilted the conversation really was.

Stepping under a low hanging branch, not waiting for Ruby to catch up, Mercury continued to walk down hill while calling back. "So all I'm saying is… If you have to make the choice, a brick is definitely the best random object to bash someone over the head with."

Ruby pinched her nose, already feeling as though she had won the argument earlier, and replied: "No, dumbass. I told you already, a bottle is always the best weapon to use if you're smashing someone's skull in."

"Hmph! Not a chance!" Mercury was scrounging through his pack, which he had swung over his shoulder and onto his stomach, and joked: "also, nine times out of ten a bottle breaks before it kills the dude. When have you ever broken a brick while mashing somebody's face in?"

Replying slyly, winking at Mercury mischievously out of the side of her eye, Ruby quipped: "Nine times out of ten I've found a bottle to work just fine. See, we can both make up stupid data... Seriously, what's with you and bricks."

Sighing with happiness, finally finding what he had been searching for, Mercury plucked a pair of cracked half-moon glasses out of the bottom of his bag. Using his sleeve to polish the glass, the silver-haired villain muttered absentmindedly to himself. "I just find it kind of funny to be honest. Have you ever seen the look on somebody's face when you throw a brick at them?"

"Nope. I don't throw things, it never ends well. If you miss, you're now left weaponless with an even more pissed off opponent than before."

Mercury smiled down at the brunette walking next to him and said: "I guess, but it's priceless Ruby. It's like the entire apocalypse is put on hold for a second, and I'm sure the only thing the other person can think is '_did you seriously just throw a brick at me?_' The face they make just cracks me up every time."

Ruby rolled her eyes, taking off ahead of Mercury while calling back. "your sense of humor sucks!"

Putting a skip in his step to catch up, Mercury called after the hooded figure in front of him, yelling: "that means absolutely nothing from you Red!"

* * *

Making their way down the slope of the mountain, where they were almost down at sea level again, had been much easier than working their way up and over the mountain. Unfortunately for Ruby, somebody thought it was so easy that he thought he could multitask. And he refused to believe that he couldn't, even if the day's events said otherwise.

"Mercury, please stop reading your book until we get to a place to stop. I really don't mind taking a break if you want to read for an hour," Ruby whined, getting real tired of watching and hearing Mercury walk into trees. He made the dumbest huff noise every time he ran into an outreaching branch, as if all the air slowly wheezed out of him.

Peering over the cover of his book while continuing to maintain a steady pace, giving Ruby a glare, he snapped back. "I've been dying to get out of these mountains, and I want that to happen today. Also, you should read more." Looking back down at the book, flicking over the page with a thumb, Mercury mumbled: "seriously, since the world ended how many books have you read? I've got a few in my bag that I could loan to you; keep you from becoming illiterate…"

Ruby sighed while lying. "Plenty. But that's not the issue I'm having here. What **does** bother me is you constantly running into tree's because you're not watching where you're going. I'm getting tired of hearing you groan every few minutes as you smack headfirst into every other tree."

"I'm fine! Besides, this is a good book, and I'm at the best part!"

Ruby just pinched the bridge of her nose, already feeling a headache coming on from bickering with Mercury. Taking off ahead of the silver-haired man, she called back to him, saying: "Whatever! Do what you want!"

Ruby was only forced to sigh as she suddenly heard a grunt behind her as Mercury slammed head first into the umpteenth tree, one that the brunette had easily weaved around.

Turning away from Mercury, Ruby flexed her fingers, feeling as though something was amiss. Looking at her long slender fingers, left open to the air in her fingerless gloves, Ruby started squeezing and massaging each fingertip. Rubbing her palms together while she walked through the frigid air, Ruby mumbled to herself out loud. "That is really weird…"

"What is Red?" Looking over at Ruby, Mercury raised an eyebrow at the brunette when he saw Ruby holding both of her palms against her cheeks. "Um… yeah, I thought I could come up with an interesting way of asking, but I just can't. So I'm just going to ask point-blank... the hell are you up to?"

"You haven't been around that long, but my hands used to get super cold. Too cold, they used to hurt all season long while I was in the snow. Now…well, they feel fine." Ruby stuck her hands out in front of her, flexing them multiple times before muttering: "it's not as cold as it was a week ago, but I should still be getting pins and needles…"

"Ah, yeah, that." Mercury looked over the book he was reading while walking along, and his coal black eyes flashed while he quipped lightly: "I fixed that when I was working on you."

Ruby's head snapped around, and standing frozen mid stride in the frigid air she stared at Mercury with wide eyes. After a second of silence, where Mercury continued to walk as though he hadn't noticed Ruby stop, she suddenly snap at the happy go luck guy in front of her. "The fuck does that mean?"

Mercury closed the book he was reading, _The Third Crusade_, and replied as though he was commenting on the weather. "You had a real shitty heart, probably would have keeled over because of a heart attack sooner or later. I may have done a bit of work to fix that… along with the bullet holes."

"Wait, what!? So I was just going to drop dead at some point just because of bad luck?" Ruby, while finding the idea somewhat grim, also saw some irony in the statement as well. It was cryptic, but the idea of struggling on for years only to keel over clutching her chest was a little funny to the brunette.

"Not bad luck, you did that to yourself." Mercury opened his book again, thumbing across a few pages while trying to find his place. Once he found his place he read the first three words on the page before the book was snatched away by Ruby.

"Stop doing that!"

Flabbergasted, Mercury replied back: "what?! Reading?! If you've seriously got a problem with me reading, you're going to hell for being an uncultured hillside prick!" He reached for the book, although Ruby immediately pulled it away and held it over her shoulder away from him.

"I don't give a shit about your reading! I'm just sick of you dropping these little tidbits of information here and there, and then walking ahead nonchalantly as though what you're saying means nothing!" Ruby brought the book forward and quickly smacked Mercury on top of the head. Brandishing the book as though she was getting ready to hit him again, Ruby growled: "I want to know everything you have found out about… well, about anything you would think I would even remotely be interested in hearing!"

"Come on Red, I just got to the best part!"

"And I guess you'll get to read '_the best part'_ when tell me what the hell you meant by that!"

Sighing heavily, Mercury groaned "...meant by what exactly?"

"That heart comment you made! I am in top physical health, in peak…ish condition!"

"My god you're dense…," Mercury groaned, rubbing the top of his head where he was beginning to feel a welt form. "What causes people to have heart attacks Red?"

"Gah, I don't know…. french fries, bacon, fried pancakes… Well, anything from Atlas really…. Anyway, unless I've been eating like a pig unconsciously, I don't see how I'd be having any health issues!"

"None?"

Ruby replied back confidently. "Not a one!"

Running a hand through his hair slyly, Mercury smiled down at Ruby as though he was sharing a lighthearted joke with her. "I can think of a few things…"

"Like?"

Mercury put his hand in front of Ruby's face, holding up two fingers. Wiggling the two digits in front of her face, he said: "one would be severe stress, and the other would be chronic lack of sleep. Mix those two with not eating well, which I can understand can't be helped, and I see a very unhealthy lifestyle forming."

The brunette stared up at Mercury, whose mouth twitched at the corners. He had Ruby backed into a corner. Realizing that Mercury could be right, Ruby started stuttering while trying to think up excuses. "But… I… Well, it's not that I haven't-"

"Spare me the sob stories Ruby. You know, we weren't designed to sleep seven hours a night for fun; we do that because we need to. Maybe you could get away with it back when you were sitting on the couch at Beacon ten years ago, but not anymore." Looking down at Ruby, in a tone that somehow straddled the line between threatening and concerned, Mercury growled: "you don't have to listen to me, but it would be a shame to see you slumped over dead just because you like staying up late and fretting over every little thing."

"Every little thing?! Wha-, Mercury, we close our eyes for twenty minutes and we risk getting eaten! You can't tell me that everybody else isn't as high-strung as I am!"

Mercury sighed heavily, and snapped back at the redhead. "Well I guess we're all made of stronger stuff than you! Also, I'd disagree with that last statement! I like to think that I'm a pretty laid back guy!" Seeing Ruby's upper lip curl into a sneer, Mercury cut off the redhead one last time. "You need to learn to let go before your heart literally gives up on living. It's going to pop like a ballon if you keep this up…"

Ruby didn't know how to respond to that, so she just decided she wouldn't. Turning on her heel, she began to stalk away from her traveling companion. A half second after she started walking away, she heard the sound of someone clearing their voice behind her. Looking back, she saw Mercury hold out a hand and curl back his fingers a few times, raising an eyebrow and saying: "I'd really like my book back now please."

Ruby's eye twitched for a second, as though she was on the verge of a mental breakdown. The smug know it all look on Mercury's face was the worst part though. Ruby took a step towards Mercury, already knowing that she wasn't just going to hand it back. Ruby, playing a little bit dirty, smacked Mercury on the top of the head with the spine of his book, the quick blow knocking him to the ground. Seeing Mercury flop on his back, she turned away, tossing the book over her shoulder and hearing a solid thunk of what was probably the book connecting with Mercury's head a quarter of a second later. Walking off, calling over her shoulder, Ruby growled angrily, "I am not stressed! And you can take your no good Dr. Fix It attitude and find somebody who actually wants to listen to your lectures!"

Instead of hearing an angry growl curse at her, she heard a laughing voice call after her, saying: "Doctor Fix It thinks you've got some wire crossed in your head! If you were thinking clearly you would be able to see that brick is the way to go!" Ruby could only groan as a response as she slowed down. She was still walking away from Mercury, but Ruby was now walking slow enough that he'd catch up sooner rather than later.

* * *

"So, I've been meaning to ask you something…" Mercury muttered absentmindedly, massaging his neck while walking along side Ruby. He still had a red mark across his face from where the book had landed, and Ruby wasn't sure if it was her imagination, or if he actually had the word 'Crusade' stamped backwards across his forehead. Mercury had at least put the book back in his pack, although the silver-haired man had only done that when Ruby threatened him with another head wound if he didn't put it away.

"Oh my god, drop it with the bricks already. I honestly don't care; if its life or death and I have to kill somebody I'm using whatever's nearby, even if it's a freaking potted plant."

Shifting uncomfortably, slowing down slightly, Mercury mumbled: "It isn't."

"Uhhhhhhhhhhh… what is it?"

Mercury sighed, and then went: "nah… never mind."

Ruby's eyes flashed, and after a moment where she stared up at Mercury, silently fuming, she spat angrily: "Fucking ask! You've already pissed me off with the whole 'you lead an unhealthy lifestyle, you need to sleep, and do yoga, and deep breathing exercises, and skip off into the sunset while singing Kumbaya and Hakuna Matata' bullshit. I can't see you doing any more damage."

"You obviously don't have that great of an imagination…" Mercury started joking, although he trailed off when he saw the furious look on Ruby's face. Sighing heavily, Mercury groaned while muttering: "just don't bite my head off, okay."

"I reserve the right to do so if I decide you're being a moron," Ruby answered back with a raised eyebrow. Ruby started wondering to herself in her head, '_What's with you beating around the bush_?'

Scratching his head, Mercury thought to himself for a second before sighing. "That's probably the best deal I'm going to get." Mercury scrunched up his face, bouncing up and down on the soles of his feet while thinking of how to ask the question he had been chewing on in the back of his mind since he had pick up and pieced back together the near death Ruby. Finally Mercury began, first asking: "You remember Emerald right?"

"Okay Mercury, I may be forgetful, but I'm not going to forget an arch nemesis!" The corners of Ruby's mouth twitched, and she added mockingly: "That's what makes you so memorable."

"Okay, alright! Just making sure!" Making placating gestures with his hands, Mercury went on. "That's where all this stuff starts. So, anyway, she had this thing," and suddenly Mercury cut himself off, looking uncomfortable for a second. "She called it this, not me by the way…"

"Oh my god, spit it out Mercury!"

"Alright, alright! Anyway, she had this sorta sense, she called it the… uh… well, she called it the Gay-dar."

Ruby's face scrunched up, taken off guard. "That's… mildly offensive…"

"Her not me! Anyway, this thing was on point man! Never wrong, like ever!" Mercury paused for a second, seeing he was drifting into creepy territory from the look on Ruby's face. "So she told me about you on the night of the dance, back when you were still a first year at Beacon, kept me from hitting on you. She laughed when I said I was going to take a shot… said she was getting red-hot signals from both you, your partner, and like half the room."

"First off… okay." Taking an involuntary step back, more uncomfortable than anything else, Ruby asked: "but…uh… what are you getting at Mercury? This is getting a little weird. Am I supposed to be flattered or something? Because I hate to tell you this, but it's not working."

"No, um…damn, how do I… Hell with it, I'll just get to the chase. When I found you I was following behind those bandits who were following you and Weiss."

"Yes…" Ruby responded, bobbing her head wearily, wondering where the hell he was going with this. Ruby was starting to get slight flashbacks of when she wanted to leave Mercury behind, even if she knew she wasn't going to act upon them this time. As bad as he could be at times, she had really warmed up to Mercury. But he was still being a creep, and Ruby honestly didn't know what he was getting on about.

"I heard… well, I heard that argument between you and Weiss… Pretty hard core shouting match…" Mercury rocked back and forth for a second, hands in his pockets while he waited for Ruby to comment. When she didn't, Mercury cut to the chase and just went forward with his question. "What exactly happened between the two of you for you guys to end up in an all out shouting match like that?"

Ruby just shrugged her shoulders, and replied back bluntly, surprised at how hard it had been for Mercury to ask that. "Uh, it was just difference of opinion I guess. I don't know, Weiss and I argue a lot now a days… Why do you care?"

Mercury rubbed his neck uncomfortably, trying to think of a way to just ask what had been chewing at him over the past few days. "I was just wondering… whether you guys were partners, or were you still… uh, _partners-partners…"_

Ruby froze mid step, suddenly catching on to what Mercury had been beating around the bush with. "Oh! ...ah, we are just… just partners." Mercury raised his eyebrows at the brunettes tone; he had never heard Ruby sound crestfallen before. It didn't fit her.

"Seriously?" Mercury's brow furrowed, remembering back to before the world ended. "Because, I distinctly remember the gossip around Vale, maybe a year or two before everything went to shit."

Sighing lightly, Ruby asked. "Mercury, could we not. I would rather...," but she trailed off when she saw that Mercury had no intention of stopping. Bitterly the redhead thought '_so were gonna fucking do this? Great…'_

"I distinctly remember there being a prodigy student with no real connections, well, other than a decently respected uncle and a quirky stepfather, graduating at the top of her class two years ahead of the normal pace, set up to one day be one of the best huntresses ever trained inside of the organization. Everyone thought she'd probably end up taking Ozpin's place as head of the hunter association in ten to fifteen years, once she'd actually received the experience and… it sounds corny, but the wisdom from simply spending time in the field." Pausing for a few seconds for dramatic effect, the Mercury continued on with his story, trying not to make eye contact with Ruby. He was pretty sure she would try to stop him if she could.

"And after that part blew over, the entire city started gossiping on how this prodigy had hooked up with her partner, who by sheer coincidence happened to be the heiress to Schnee Dust, one of the most profitable and influential companies in the world." Mercury glanced down for a quarter of a second at Ruby, to see if she was still paying attention. He honestly couldn't tell; the brunette had suddenly acquired a thousand yard stare, and was looking out over the horizon wistfully.

"Apparently they had been trying to keep it quiet for a while, and had actually been successful for over two years. But then a certain loud mouthed monkey blabs to the wrong person when he gets drunk, and then the Schnee in question is dragged in front of her parents. They start asking… well, begging really, for her to say it wasn't true."

She still didn't acknowledge him. Ruby didn't respond to anything he had said, although she did breathe in and out deeply, as if she was trying to clear her head. Mercury took that as a sign to keep going, although really he wasn't entirely positive he should. He wasn't sure if there was a line to be crossed, and if there even was one, where it would be.

"But when she said it was true, and that she was actually, finally happy... well, they weren't good parents, because they really tried their damnedest to kill that happiness. I remember her being disowned, losing every dime and possession she owned. Well, it was quite scandalous really. It was big news in all the papers; her parents actually tried to force her to change her name, along with taking every title and birthright she'd ever possessed away." Again, Mercury looked down at Ruby, to see if she had reacted at all. Still nothing, although now it seemed as though something was paining the redhead.

"And the heiress was left with nothing but her school supplies and her crappy dorm room, after her family disowns her because of her life choices, and how she couldn't leave the family an heir as… well, as a lesbian with a lesbian partner, especially a partner who came from nothing. It didn't matter that the girl was going places, only that she hadn't come from the richy riches... well, that and..." Mercury suddenly trailed off while scratching his head, losing his train of thought for a second on a vulgar thought.

Remembering where he left off, he continued on. "Anyway, sure, if you read her quotes in the paper as if a robot said them it would seem as though Miss Princess was sad enough. But really, anyone with a brain could tell that she was really happy, underneath all the legal disputes and fancy lawyer talk."

Mercury let the last bit, the one part he knew would either get under Ruby's skin or be deflected by the brunette's heart, fall off his tongue sadly. "I know they got engaged, and were planning on getting married in the spring, if they hadn't been shipped out to Atlas to deal with the beginning of the end."

For the first time, Ruby actually responded to Mercury. "Yes Mercury. Yes, yes, fucking yes. I think you remembered all that _just perfectly_. So thank you so much for that trip down memory lane, but what does that have to do with anything?"

"I just want to know what happened? I hated your guts back then, but even I could see you two were happy. How did that change?"

"How the hell do you think it changed?" Bitterly Ruby snapped: "The world fell to pieces. That has to change things."

"But how did it make you two of all things go wrong? I wouldn't have bet on it, if I had been given the chance. I never would have."

"Tch! Do you seriously think I'm the same silly girl I was when I got out of Beacon? Do you think Weiss is the same either? Is anyone the same?" Ruby looked Mercury in the eyes, and he could easily see his reflection in the brunettes cold and lifeless ones. Ruby mumbled sadly: "you're definitely not the same. No one is. The world ending changed us all. I'd say we were all scarred when we changed."

"But how could you go from being madly in love to what I saw in front of Black Fall a week ago?"

Standing completely still in the quiet forest, which seemed to be hold its breath while waiting for an answer too, Ruby stared at the ground between her feet. The wind's howling had died down, and it was so quiet that the two couldn't even hear the sounds of sounds of the swaying branches that masked each other's breathing. She swayed back and forth for a few seconds, as though Ruby was unsure of how she would answer. But in the end Ruby just mumbled sadly into the scarf wrapped around her neck. "I'd rather not talk about it…"

Mercury reached out, grabbing Ruby on the shoulder as she tried to walk away again. The second his hand landed on her shoulder, the brunette jerked away. Ruby tried walking away again, shoving her hands into her pockets while she did so, as if she was washing her hands of this whole mess. But Mercury, knowing better than to reach for her again, weaved in front of Ruby and blocked her path. Standing directly in front of her, Mercury just said: "I want to know."

Ruby glared up at Mercury, flinging hateful thoughts at the silver-haired menace. But unable to pick one idea to stab at Mercury with, as there were so many hateful things whirling around in Ruby's head, she ended up just grumbling:"I do not want to talk about it."

Ruby tried to step around him, but when she tried to walk around Mercury to his right, he blocked her path again. "I want to know Red. I know literally nothing about you other than your depressing and cryptic, and I would say this seems damn well important enough for me to burn a few bridges on."

Ruby snapped angrily, finally breaking her cold facade. "And why do you want to know, hm? Just for some shitty piece of trivia, some little fast fact about one of your new patients!?"

Mercury answered her in a level voice. "I want to know how you could change so much."

"Tch! You _seriously_ think there is some grandiose reason!"

Mercury answered her sadly, saying "I know there must be."

Whirling around on her heel, turning away for a second, only to turn back a second later and shove a finger in Mercury's face, Ruby started shouting. "You don't get to judge me! I know I've made mistakes, but they are mistakes that I at least made on my own!"

"What kinds of mistakes?"

Ruby knew she didn't want to tell him. She knew she wanted to keep on burying her mistakes deeper and deeper, until eventually she wouldn't be able to go back and get them… but she also wanted someone to know too. Not because he would understand, but because he would judge her for what she had done. In her core, so basic to the point of where she couldn't even know it herself, Ruby _did_ want someone to judge her for all she had done over the last five years. She wanted someone to agree about all the things she thought she had become, to point out and confirm all the faults she already blamed herself for.

Ruby's voice came out thick, as if she was choking back emotions, and she started with a simple statement. Easy enough to get out.

"I've made my own mistakes! B-but they weren't my fault!" That last part sounded like a lie even to Ruby.

Stumbling over her words, trying to get them out quickly, Ruby shuddered to herself while huffing everything out. The way she was talking, it was as if Ruby thought she'd run out of time and be forced to keep the rest of this to herself. "I thought, after Yang died, that I had to make the choice to either keep Weiss happy, or keep Weiss alive. I was stupid back then… I still hoped that one day all of this would blow over, sort itself out!" Mimicking her own voice, coming out as a mocking, high-pitched ditzy idiot, Ruby mocked: "I thought to myself, 'I'll keep her alive, no matter the damage I do. I can fix it later. No matter the cost'."

Ruby then spat her next line bitterly. "The cost was how Weiss thought of me, how she loved me. I used her, my Weiss, to let myself justify becoming a monster. I thought it was… I don't know… _easier_ to live as a heartless killer than as somebody who could both love and protect their loved ones." Ruby sniffed, and in a choked voice added at the end: "I knew that Weiss didn't love me the way we did before the world ended. But I thought we could eventually learn to love each other again in a different way. It took me four years to realize that Weiss doesn't just not love me anymore… she fucking hates me now. Because I'm the perfect example of everything that's wrong with the world."

Mercury stood there, stunned in silence. He didn't think the brunette would have opened up to him on that level. And he had absolutely no clue on what to say to something like that. "Maybe… are you sure she-"

"I read her diary pages. Just the ones I found were mean enough." Ruby laughed a cracked, hollow laugh, and added an out of place joke. "Well, they were brutally honest. I guess people don't say 'the truth hurts' for nothing. It's my fault for peeking where I knew there'd be trouble."

"Ruby, maybe she doesn't..." Mercury trailed off when he saw the crestfallen look on Ruby's face.

"She does, and she always will Mercury. I did things that I wouldn't forgive myself for if I was in her shoes. It doesn't matter that I did those things for her... If anything, for Weiss that made them worse. All that matters to her is that I did them." Ruby mashed her lips together, and they became a razor thin line as she looked over Mercury's shoulder at the sky. "We need to get moving if we want to make it to the bottom of the mountain before night falls."

And before Mercury could say anything else, she turned away from him and back to their original path. She walked off, already knowing that nothing had changed by this. Getting her dirty laundry out in the open didn't make her feel any better. It only made her far more sad. Because while Mercury did ask if Weiss could have forgive her, he didn't say that what Ruby had done wasn't wrong. He never came close to saying anything like that.

* * *

Walking along in silence, Ruby trudged along in front while Mercury tailed behind her. The sun was about to disappear behind the peak behind them, and it was as if the ball of fire knew that it had little time to act. Before it was lost for the rest of the day, the sun had really started to beat down on the backs of their necks, as if to remind them of it's season long absence. Both Ruby and Mercury were happy for the heat. It was a welcome change from the normal constant blistering cold winds. And as they walked down the slope, Ruby knew they both noticed when the incline they were walking along plateaued out. A small smile broke out along Ruby's face, and she thought grimly '_well, were out of the mountains at least'_.

_"_So, now that were home free, what's next?" Mercury looked at Ruby out of the side of his eye, wondering if she would ever give over to waterworks. She had laid out some pretty heavy stuff, and he couldn't understand how she could look just fine while they were walking along. Saying that the love of her life had come to hate her would usually leave most people to at least need to wipe their eyes with a tissue. But after a few seconds where her eyes got no wetter than being misty, Ruby had just shook her head and walked on.

Ruby stopped for a second, and looking right and left, she saw the opening to a tunnel off to their right. Ruby cocked a thumb over at the cave, and without waiting for Mercury to stop she walked off towards the entrance. Passing into the shadow of the cave, where the ground was clean and hard, Ruby sat down against the tunnel wall and leaned her head back. Looking up, she guessed that the ceiling was around fifteen feet above them, and the other wall twenty feet away. And looking to her left, back into the depths of the tunnel, the area turned too black for her to be able to see what was hidden.

Standing in the center of the tunnel, not looking to sit down, Mercury muttered: "So what, you're taking now to call it a day?"

"Nope, but I just wanted to take a quick break. We've got a few hours before the sun goes down, so I figured we might as well rest here where it's nice before we set off one last time."

Raising an eyebrow at the woman sitting down against the granite wall, he asked: "you're up for taking breaks? I thought you would be nearly sprinting for... where ever we're going." Smirking slightly, Mercury added offhandedly: "which you have left me totally in the dark on. Care to let me in on your grand plan?"

"Hmmmmm... Well..." Ruby began, running a hand through her hair while she thought. "I'd say we're going to make a B-line for Beacon from here. Closest city, and if there is any place to start looking, that would be it."

"Alright. I'm good with that." Mercury looked up at the ceiling for a moment, and he tried to jump and skim his fingers off the cave's roof. He failed miserably, and after a second and third try he sourly asked: "you heard anything recent about Beacon? Because I haven't."

"Yeah, apparently it's functioning pretty similar to Caric. If you were rich enough to afford a boat ride, or lucky enough to get on a ship unnoticed, you could make the trip from Caric to Beacon in a few days. Apparently Beacon is still under martial law, although I don't know much past that. I guess we'll find out when we..." Ruby trailed off, the rest of her sentence still hanging on her tongue. Both she and Mercury looked off to her left, into the inky darkness of the cave, as an odd rumbling noise reverberated off the walls. "Do you hear-"

Ruby would have kept talking, but suddenly a figure shot out of the darkness, flying towards them at break neck speeds. She was visible for a quarter of a second before the pure white figure smashed into Mercury, who had been so caught off guard that he didn't even try to step out of her way. There was an audible thud as the two collided, and it was amazing that they didn't both go flying to the floor. Instead they just glance off of each other, and the smaller girl skittered towards Ruby for a second as she was knocked off-balance.

Ruby was on her feet in a flash, because in that quarter of a second, barely any time at all, she saw the face of the person who had slammed into Mercury. But Ruby didn't need to see her face. She didn't need to see the person's snow-white gear. Really it could only be one person.

It could only be Weiss.

Weiss didn't see Ruby getting off the floor, and she didn't register who Mercury was. After a quarter second where she almost fell on her face, her legs found their rhythm again, and before anything had changed she was already past the redhead at her original speed. She kept running, and calling back over her shoulder to Mercury, still unaware of Ruby, she screamed "Run!"

Ruby was already chasing after Weiss, already gaining on the shorter woman. She hadn't even registered what Weiss had said, but with Weiss running away, Ruby would follow. She'd abandon Mercury without a second thought if it meant keeping up with Weiss.

Mercury wasn't as quick thinking though. It had probably been less than two seconds, but as he stumbled around while regaining his balance, he suddenly saw a rustling of inky blackness at the back of the tunnel. His instincts told him to run, but his brain told him it was foolish. They had been gone for so long, one couldn't pop up in the most grand of circumstances. It wasn't until he suddenly heard a blood curdling howl that he realized his error.

A moment later the Beowolf was upon him.

* * *

**Yay, Weiss is back! I hope you'll all be excited for what's to come, I've got a lot planned in the coming weeks! I'm really looking forward to it.**

**(Fucking hell, it's here too... Uh, maybe I was starting to feel a bit too positive. I thought all those errors had been long behind me. Now, not so much... But hey, this is the last one, and the next few chapters are really where I start getting better)**


	11. The Winds Of Change

If Mercury hadn't been hardwired from years of training to deal with the monster he was suddenly facing against, he would have died the second the Beowolf was upon him. But his instincts took over where his mind stood frozen, and as a giant clawed hand ripped through the air in front of him, his legs moved on their own and shoved him back. His brain caught up a second later, and with a wry smile he looked at the challenge in front of him.

He was a huntsman, and sizing up the snarling black mass of fur in front of him, he didn't turn and run after the two women, although that would have been the smart approach. This was what he had trained his entire life for. It didn't matter that he had taken a near decade long break. He knew what to do, it was as if he was just breathing. He didn't feel brave as he walked forward, and as cold terror ran rampantly throughout his veins, a small part of him screamed at his legs to turn and bolt. But instead of running, Mercury stepped forward, already bouncing on his feet in anticipation of clashing against this monster. _Let's see what you've got, you snarling chunk of smoke…_

Most people think that a fight is long and draw out. They've seen too many action movies, thinking that the two combatants would square off against each other while throwing back and forth a few sneers, a couple of witty remarks, and after a tense few second silence they would brawl. But that's not how a real fight works. Especially when it's a clash between two fighters that are both looking for an easy kill.

Almost too fast to follow, the grimm lashed out with a giant clawed hand and ripping through the space that Mercury's head had been in less than a second before. Barely stepping out of range, feeling some of the fur on the beowolf's knuckles dust across his face, Mercury lunged forward and kicked at the beast's head with a steel toed boot. The blow barely connected, although it was more than enough to stun the beast. Mercury brought his foot back around, already aiming to deal a finishing blow.

But he hesitated for a second too long while lining up his shot, and before he could send a bullet through the beowolf's skull, a giant black paw wrapped around his leg. Suddenly yanked into the air, Mercury made eye contact with the beowolf for a second when he heard a resonating 'CRUNCH' come from his lower leg.

Before he had any time to feel the pain of his lower leg getting shattered, Mercury swung his other foot up and shifted his ankle, the trigger for his pistol spurs, aiming wildly. He couldn't even see where he fired, but after the loud gunshot that made his ears begin to ring Mercury felt the grip around his leg go slack. He fell to the cave floor before the echoing stopped bouncing back and forth off the cave walls.

Mercury dropped to the floor, landing painfully on his head and flopping onto his back, all the air forced out of his lungs. He lay there for a second, stunned by the sudden blow to his head, before he flared back to life.

"Dust!" Scrambling against the cave floor, Mercury shoved himself back as far as he could, until he felt his back press against a hard, smooth surface. Finally looking up, expecting to see some claws flying down at him to end his life, Mercury saw nothing. In a heap in front of him, falling gracelessly on the floor, Mercury saw the beowolf fall first to its knees, and from there onto it's face. Looking at Mercury, the beowolfs face had one destroyed eye, a crater where the orb should have been boring a hole straight through it's black brain, all the way through the head and out the base of it's skull.

"…I fucking did it…" A half second later, the realization kicked in. "I FUCKING DID IT! Fuck you, you piece of shit mongrel! You don't have anything on me! I'm not dying ye- ow!" When Mercury overextended himself, trying to raise himself off the ground to celebrate, he suddenly felt a pang of pain from his leg. Although it was less of a pang, and more of a gut wrenching, blood curdling scream of agony from his nerves.

Grimacing, Mercury ran both his hands up and down the fractured limb. _Damn, it's shattered in almost six different places._ He knew he had to fix his leg quickly, before he bled out internally. His aura, although it was weak after all this time, allowed him to feel around inside his leg and see what damage he had sustained. He could feel his blood beginning to pool in the ripped muscles surrounding the wound.

Muttering to himself angrily as he worked, Mercury blasted his leg with a few jolts of his silver aura. "I'm not an infinite source of healing, one day I'm going to run out… I'll probably find out while I'm in the middle of fixing something and be screwed." Shuddering as he felt his own life force slip out of his fingers and into his leg, Mercury groaned as he felt the bones shift back into place. "That always hurts like a bitch…"

Mercury didn't heal his leg completely. He didn't need to. Once his leg was good enough to walk on, albeit gingerly at best, he stopped and quickly cut off his aura, feeling the left over energy in his fingers flow back up his arms and seep into his torso from there. "I really need to save what's left…" Getting up slowly, leaning against the wall so that he wasn't putting weight on his leg, Mercury looked out to the entrance of the cave. Sighing heavily, Mercury sauntered forward, wincing every time his newly healed leg supported his weight. "Let's go find those two bitches…"

* * *

Meanwhile, almost a mile off in the distance, an exhausted woman was flying through the forest as fast as she could get her legs to move her. Weaving around tree trunks and bobbing under low hanging branches, Weiss ran as though her life depended on it. The blonde thought it still did.

"Weiss!"

Running at a break neck speed with the winds whipping by loudly in her ears, the blonde barely registered the sounds of shouting as someone called after her.

"Hey! Slow down!"

Weaving between the trees, clutching at her aching side as she ran while fighting off a stitch, Weiss began to wonder who was calling after her. She knew who the voice sounded like, but Weiss couldn't believe her ears. She'd already decided there were some people who she'd just never see again. But Weiss had to know, so instead of continuing to run away from the danger the blonde decided to be stupid, and turned around to look back.

For a couple of seconds, as Weiss looked back, all she saw were black bark covered tree trunks and old withered roots crisscrossing the ground. The air wasn't nearly as biting as it had been the last time she had been above ground, although the air was still cold, and it burned her lungs as she huffed in the air. Weiss felt as though she was barely getting anything out of the air as she felt her chest heave up and down. Although she was still in the shadow of the mountain, the surrounding forest was decently lit. It would have been much prettier in a gloom, all the light did was show how broken and dead the ground was, equally mixed with patches of dead grass, dirt, and snaking lines of dull brown roots.

When she looked behind her for that brief moment and saw nothing, Weiss assumed she must have been hearing things. With how loud her heart was pounding in her ears, Weiss was pretty sure she wasn't at top mental capacity anyway. _I'm probably hearing things. I mean... uh, holy hell, I feel as though I'm going to pass out... wait, why am I even standing here, I should get as far away from this place as I can!_

As Weiss began turning away, already getting ready to start her sprint again, she saw out of the corner of her eye someone whip out from behind a tree trunk just a little off the path she had taken through the woods. Weiss reacted on instinct, trying to jump out of the way. But instead Weiss accidentally leapt into the runner's path, and felt the person slam into her entire body and knock the heiress to the ground. Landing in a jumble of limbs on the ground, Weiss ended up with her back on the forest floor while looking up. Feeling her back press against the webbing of roots and grass tufts underneath her, which was somewhat uncomfortable, Weiss tried looking up and seeing who was on top of her. When she did Weiss found herself gazing up into a pair of both animated yet dull grey eyes.

Stunned, Weiss began to stutter, "Ru-," but was quickly jerked off the ground by the woman on top of her.

"No time!" Ruby, who had already scrambled back to her feet from their tumble, grabbed the heiress by her elbows and quickly wrenched Weiss up, lifting the smaller woman off the ground entirely for a split second. Letting the blonde go so that she landed on her feet, Ruby grabbed Weiss's wrist and started towing the smaller girl behind her, now running ahead of her partner. "What are we running from?!"

After getting the wind knocked out of her from falling, along with just being generally exhausted from running at a full sprint for far longer than she thought she could, Weiss could only get out broken phrases in between the huffs and pants for air she was making. "We… ru… grimm, going to… gah!" Weiss tripped over her own feet, and was dragged a half-dozen feet by Ruby for a couple of seconds. Weiss hissed as she felt the skin on her knees get torn up by exposed roots and rocks that laced the forest floor.

"Sorry!" Ruby yanked on Weiss's arm, yanking even harder on the blonde's arm, pulling the heiress back to her feet without stopping. In her mind, keeping the idle statement to herself, Ruby couldn't help but think: _'Are you this seriously this exhausted? How long were you running for?!'_

Ruby ended up half-leading-half-dragging the girl behind her along for the next dozen or so seconds as they ran, the redhead being both taller and still at her full stamina. The blonde's legs more than anything just swung along underneath her, to keep herself from falling forward and ramming into the ground face first. But when Weiss stumbled again, ripping up the skin on her knees even more than she already had, Ruby realized that Weiss wasn't going to be able to keep up this pace for much longer.

Without warning her, Ruby suddenly jerked Weiss to their right, behind a fallen tree trunk that easily blocked them from view. Land hastily in the dirt, Ruby and Weiss ended up sitting side by side in the shadow of the fallen tree. Torso thick branches that could have been tree trunks themselves stuck out around the two, and it looked as though the dead tree limbs were forming a cage around them. The tree had probably fallen recently; the surrounding ground looked as though it had been recently torn up by the falling tree, whose branches had scrapped across the ground as it fell over. The earth they were sitting on gave off the strong husky, woodsy smell of dried mud and snapped twigs.

Looking over the top of their wooden barrier, Ruby saw nothing as she peered out over the forest behind them. Scouring the area they had just ran through for trouble… she really saw nothing. Ignoring the rapid panting noises coming from her right, Ruby didn't even see any signs of life in the forest. Except for a few birds that were flying off into the distance, away from the noise of the two runners, although they were so far away at this point they were nothing more than black silhouettes against the dark blue evening sky. There were just hundreds of rough black tree trunks sticking out of the ground, supporting the crooked and forked tree branches that split off and up wildly into the sky, reaching up a few hundred high with their barren branches. These trees were ancient, and it was odd that one of the giants had fallen over. The shorter, constantly purple clad leafy trees of Forever Fall were off further in the distance, maybe a dozen or two miles away. A total silence that blanketed the entire forest, only pierced by the girl next to Ruby.

Turning back to her partner, Ruby was suddenly alarmed when she saw how flushed the usual pail blonde was. Weiss's face was tinted an angry red, and her chest was rising up and down frantically as she sat propped up against the tree trunk, her head bobbing up and down as she took fast, shallow breaths. Weiss was definitely passed winded, she was probably on the verge of passing out.

In a calming voice… or as calming as Ruby could try to make herself sound, she mumbled quietly to her partner. "Just breathe Weiss, deep breaths. You're going to hyperventilate and pass out." Weiss didn't seem to be listening, and started coughing in-between the deep breaths she was taking, still barely holding on to the air she was trying to take in. "Just deep breaths Weiss. Just deep breaths…" Ruby held her hand out nervously over Weiss's shoulder, not sure if she should pat her partner on the back to work the cough out of Weiss, or just leave the blonde to recover on her own.

Weiss seemed to start paying attention to Ruby, and took a few deep breaths, sounding as though she was finally starting to recover. Ruby was glad; she wasn't entirely sure what she would do if Weiss did end up passing out. _Maybe I'd carry her off until we were safe… that or just wait here and hope whatever we're running from doesn't find us?_

Out of the side of her eye, which was still watering from Weiss's coughing, the blonde started asking broken question's between her pants. "You… shot… I thought you… dead… how…?"

Shushing Weiss, Ruby mumbled kindly to the coughing wreck of a woman. "Shhhhhhh…. Just breathe for me Weiss. We've got time, I'm not going anywhere."

Weiss's questions stopped for a few seconds, although the look on her face told Ruby the blonde's questions weren't going anywhere. After a few moments, where Weiss got to the point where she was only breathing through her nose, although to Ruby it sounded as though the blonde was failing at trying to stop her breath from coming out raggedly, Weiss's eyes flashed and her questions started to rattle out of her. "You… didn't die?"

"Duh, you're not talking to a corpse are you?"

Weiss was still too tired to roll her eyes, although she might have at that response. "I mean you… survived… getting shot. How?"

Ruby waved her hand, peering over the wooden log they were sitting behind. "It's a long story, I'll tell you about it later… Anyway, what are we running from?"

"It's a… a Grimm."

Ruby's head whipped back, and for a second the redhead wondered if Weiss had hit her head at some point while she was running. "The Grimm are dead," Ruby stated matter-of-factly.

Weiss shook her head, starting to regain her composure. "No, no there was one. A… a beowolf. It was old, and it was smart… tricked me into thinking it had disappeared; it was only hanging on the wall above where I was hiding. I had to run for my life, only got lucky…" Weiss trailed off for a second as she looked up at the sky, and without hearing it Ruby could guess what Weiss was going to say. I only got lucky that I made it outside.

"Hmmm… well, if there was one, it's not following us."

Weiss snapped at Ruby irately. "If?!"

Still looking out behind them, Ruby just shrugged her shoulders. "I'm somewhat inclined to believe there simply can't be a grimm out there. Curse the plague all you want, but it did do its job well…" While Ruby didn't say it out loud, she thought to herself in an annoyed tone: _'There's nothing chasing us; Weiss probably started seeing thing when she ran out of breath… although that doesn't really explain why she started running in the first place.'_

"I was not hallucinating, and we really need to run."

"Shhhh, no we don't."Holding up two fingers, Ruby looked at Weiss with a bemused face. "A: if there really is a Beowolf, there is no way we would ever be able to outrun it for long. Hiding is a better option."

Weiss gave Ruby a hesitant look, and started to reply. "The chances of us hiding from a Grimm are-"

"Still better than our chances of running away while we don't have semblances and you're about a hair's width from passing out." Ruby smirked, and then added sarcastically: "and B: this gives us the _absolutely_ _wonderful _chance to catch up."

"Wha… Ruby, that's a horrible idea. If we aren't running, we should be dead silent."

"Nah, if it can hear us, then it can definitely smell us already. Besides, grimm always had terrible hearing, it's why we could use all of those bullets and explosions in our weapons …, anyways, what's up with you?"

Now that she had the energy, Weiss actually did roll her eyes at her partner. "Oh, not much, just running for my life. You know how it is." Weiss's tone became somber after that quick, weak joke. "I… I thought you were dead…"

Flashing a wry smile, Ruby sighed happily while running a hand through her hair. "I'm happy you were worried, although you never have to. I've always told you not to look after me. Let's worry about you…" For the first time in a long while, Ruby gave Weiss a full smile, one that looked entirely sincere. Once that didn't look half faked. "I'm always going to be fine Weiss."

"Hmph… Still, how are you alright?" Weiss's piercing eyes roved up and down Ruby's body, settling on her leg. Weiss murmured to herself, thinking out loud about the redhead next to her. "That was a week ago at most; you should be on crutches at best…"

"Actually, that was over a week ago Weiss, and I had some… unfortunate help." Ruby peeked out over the trunk again, biting her lip while she looked out for Mercury. "And I'm starting to think I should go back for that annoying piece of shit."

Weiss got a quizzical look on her face, although she still had her iconic sneer stretched across her lips. "Who-"

Before she could finish her question, a sudden voice could be heard shouting angrily off in the distance. "BITCHES! WHERE THE FUCK DID YOU GO?!" HE must have really been screaming the top of his lungs, the voice echoed off the mountains in the distance behind them and resonated throughout the canyon a few times before the surrounding silence flared back, as though it was annoyed at being interrupted.

Ruby sighed, letting her head bonk back against the tree trunk. _Do I have to get him?_ Ruby turned to Weiss, who was looking off suspiciously in the distance where the voice sounded like it came from, back where the 'supposed' Grimm was. Ruby still didn't believe Weiss on that one, although she would ask later. "That…," Ruby groaned while cocking a thumb back in the voices direction, "would be the _unfortunate_ help."

Ruby knew she had to go get Mercury before he wandered off to far away from them and got lost. The last thing she wanted to do was go on another search mission just after she had finally found Weiss. Groaning in annoyance, the redhead pulled herself up off the ground, using some of the close by outstretched barren branches on the trunk as though they were the rungs on a ladder. Once Ruby was standing she looked down at Weiss, reaching out to help the shorter woman up. Instead of seeing Weiss getting up, she looked down to see a pair of icy blue eyes staring back up at Ruby apathetically. Ruby grumbled angrily at the look on Weiss's face, she had seen it more than a few times in the past. The blonde's lips were mashed into a hardline, and her eyebrows arched angrily, almost touching her hairline. Crossing her arms, Weiss made it crystal clear that she was going to stay parked where she was until she decided otherwise.

"Come on Weiss… lets go."

"And who the hell is that yelling off in the distance?!"

_If I told you it was Mercury, you'd definitely try to convince me to run off before he found us_. "Just a friend…"

Weiss scoffed, and defiantly tried to stare Ruby down, even though she was still sitting on the earth and barely at level with the redhead's knee. "I am not moving an inch until I know who this _friend_ we're walking towards is!"

Sighing loudly, Ruby bent her knee and crouched down to where she was at Weiss's level, and looked her partner in the eyes. Weiss sat patiently while waiting for Ruby to answer her, and for the few seconds where they just silently locked eyes, she couldn't help but think to herself: _'Your eyes have gotten brighter…'_

Instead of answering Weiss though, Ruby suddenly reached out with both arms and yanked the blonde off the ground. Before Weiss entirely knew what had happened, she was looking over Ruby's shoulder, and felt herself suddenly rise into the air as Ruby swiftly rose up off the ground to her full height again. The blonde felt an arm wrap around her waist as Ruby raised an arm to hold Weiss in place. Ruby was carrying Weiss over her shoulder as though she was just a bale of hay, or a particularly heavy crate. "We're coming," Ruby yelled loudly, shifting Weiss around on her shoulder a few times to make sure the heiress wouldn't' fall off.

Weiss couldn't even be annoyed; her mind was still trying to even comprehend what had just happened. Weiss's arms went limp and banged against Ruby's back a few times as she was hefted up and shifted around on the redhead's shoulder. She would have been lying if she said that being carried over Ruby's shoulder and feeling her partner's sharp collar-bone dig into her stomach was comfortable.

But once her mind caught up, Weiss's eyes flashed angrily as she tried pushing off Ruby's back with both of her arms. "What do you think you're doing?! Put me down!"

The only response Ruby gave to the blonde's squirming was by tightening her hold around Weiss's waist. Weiss couldn't see the brunette's face, although she could definitely hear the grin on Ruby's voice when the redhead quipped back to the girl over her shoulder. "Nah, I need somebody to watch my back."

Weiss couldn't believe her ears. Ruby making a pun? "Seriously Ruby, this is a move that even the worst, complete box office failure, reject level C-list comedy movie wouldn't attempt."

At this point Ruby had started jogging, and she laughed back to Weiss as she started to really pick up speed. "They didn't attempt it because they didn't have the balls to really commit! You got to make things awkward to get the jokes working. All of this is funny as hell to me. Now come on, enjoy the ride!"

Weiss would have snapped back at the redhead angrily, but as Ruby started jogging Weiss had to clamp her mouth shut. The blonde was afraid she would bite the tip of her tongue off as she bobbed up and down on Ruby's shoulder if she tried to talk.

_Still though, why are you in this good of a mood? I mean, I guess you would be happy to catch up with me, but I expected you to just give me a cryptic smile and go 'glad you're back' at most. Also, you're alive! I… Well, I fully believed you were dead for the past week. It feels like longer though-_

Weiss's train of thought was cut off when Ruby suddenly ducked under a low hanging branch without slowing down, or even warning the woman slung over her shoulder. With the sudden movement Weiss almost swung off Ruby's shoulder and was nearly flung onto the ground, although Ruby leaned back in the opposite direction so that Weiss didn't fall off at the last second. "Whoa, close one." The redhead began to chuckle to herself, and then in a voice that overflowed with high spirits she yelled out loud enough to make the birds in the surrounding tree's that leaned over their heads take off. "Don't go wandering too far off, we're coming!"

Weiss risked getting her tongue bitten off, and in a withering voice she tried as best she could to question the redhead. It wasn't easy, as she kept bouncing up and down with Ruby's jog, and her voice came out warbled as she shook. "W-w-w-w-w-why are you so ha-a-a-a-a-a-appy?"

Ruby snorted loudly, and then glanced back over her shoulder for a quarter of a second, barely long enough to make eye contact with the girl slung over her shoulder. "Why wouldn't I be? I've got the whole team together again! I thought I'd have to wait around for months in Vale before I found you, and with my luck you'd end up going to Signal instead…" Ruby stopped of a second, and she slowed down to a walk as she got back to the cave where they had originally ran away from.

Standing in the clearing that housed the opening to Weiss's cave, Ruby was surprised to not find Mercury leaning nonchalantly up against a tree trunk waiting for them. "Dumbass, you around here?" Ruby turned around a few times, almost giving the partner on her back motion sickness, and whistled loudly as though she was calling to a horse. "Hey! I heard you calling from somewhere around here! Where'd you go?"

For a few seconds, all Weiss could hear were the sounds of the forest. She expected to hear howls and angry growls coming off from her right, back where the Grimm had chased her from, but instead all she could hear was the quiet rusting of dead tree branches above them scraping off of each other in the wind. Their knotted and gnarled branches crisscrossed the entire sky maybe thirty feet up above them, and gave the feeling of as though she was trapped in a giant cage. Idly Weiss began to muse to herself while she tuned out Ruby, who was still whirling around while yelling out a balanced mixture of insults and concerned calls. _I really hope the trees start regrowing their leaves soon; I hate the look of the woods this time of year._

Suddenly, out of Weiss's field of vision, she heard the sound of somebody muttering angrily under their breath and stalking towards them.

"Hey, there you are! Sorry about that!" Ruby's voice came out brightly as she began calling to Mercury, who was limping up towards them from the tree line a few dozen feet away, still half hidden in the afternoon shadows. Hefting up the silent girl on her shoulder, Ruby laughed: "Had to catch this one before she ran too far off."

But Mercury was in no mood for jokes, and in a seething rage he limped forward, not even noticing the new company. "SORRY ABOUT THAT?! YOU RUN OFF AND ABANDON ME TO DEAL WITH A FUCKING BEOWOLF ALL ALONE, AND YOU THINK JUST WALTZING BACK AND SAYING 'SORRY MERCURY' IS GOOD ENOUGH?!"

Slightly taken aback, Ruby laughed uncomfortably. "There wasn't actually a Grimm, was there?"

Limping forward angrily, already halving the distance between them, Mercury growled back at her in a quieter voice than before, although it was a few rungs above normal conversation volume. "It's still back in that cave, probably hasn't dissolved yet… but don't change the fucking conversation! I swear to god Red, you're going to get me killed one of these days. My leg hurts like hell thanks to you!"

Weiss only heard Ruby reply back as the redhead mumbled quietly "holy…" Giving a squirm, Weiss tried pushing off Ruby's back again, attempting to get out of the woman's vise like grip. Being carried around on the redhead's shoulder as though she was some temper tantrum child was humiliating, to put it mildly.

Mercury finally notice Weiss slung over Ruby's shoulder when he saw the girls legs swing back and forth, bouncing off of Ruby's chest, while she tried to shake free of Ruby's grip. He was still furious, but something about seeing the old, prissy girl getting carried around like a six year old brought a smile to his face. "Well, I was hoping to do this in a grand and suave way, reinvent myself a little after all the grudges you're probably still holding against me." Barely fighting off a laugh, he finished his introduction mildly. "But I've got to say, I never thought I'd be meeting the new traveling companion ass first. You do make great entrances if anything else Weiss…"

Weiss started squirming again, trying to push herself out of the redhead's grip and off Ruby's back with both of her arms. When Ruby felt Weiss's arms against her back, instead of putting Weiss down, she simply turned around so that the girl over her shoulder was facing the direction she had just been. When the blonde was forced to look at Mercury, although she had already guessed who they were talking to, Weiss groaned at having her suspicions confirmed.

Mercury waved at the shoulder strung girl, smiling at her brightly. Instead of replying in kind, all Weiss did was groan and bury her face in the back of Ruby's jacket in response. Her voice came out muffled as she complained into Ruby's back, the blonde's long white locks almost falling down farther than her arms hung. "Are you seriously saying you got saved by this nerd?"

Ruby sighed, and grumbled a few unintelligible affirmatives.

Mercury on the other hand suddenly stuttered at the girl hanging over Ruby's shoulder. "Nerd! Who are you, Miss Priss, to call me a nerd?!"

Weiss raised her head off Ruby's back, and through a veil of hair she glared at Mercury. "In the entire year you spent undercover at our school, I had barely a single conversation with you. And the one we did have was just you telling me off about some stupid comic book character."

Stomping the foot from his good leg angrily, Mercury pointed at the blonde as though she actually cared. "Why would you ever think X-Ray was the British one?! He was obviously Mexican! The other guy even had a Union Jack on his chest!"

All Weiss did was give Mercury a withering look, and after a few seconds both Ruby and Weiss replied simultaneously: "Nerd."

Mercury pinched the bridge of his nose angrily, already getting frustrated at what was going on. Sighing heavily, he raised an eyebrow at the two women standing in front of him. "So do you just enjoy carrying Icepick around, or you afraid she's going to run off or something?"

Apparently Ruby had entirely forgotten that she was carrying Weiss, and looked over at the girl across her shoulder. "Oh, whoops!" Ruby let her arm go, and before she even had the chance to put Weiss down the blonde had already pushed herself off the redhead's shoulder. Landing on the ground in front of Ruby, Weiss took a few steps back while massaging her bruised stomach.

"You know Ruby, carrying me around like that actually hurt a lot."

Ruby just shrugged her shoulders. "I wanted to catch up with Mercury before he got too far away... You didn't really give me much choice."

"I would have come if you had told me that we needed to catch up with someone."

Raising an eyebrow, Ruby asked: "If that somebody had been Mercury?"

"Eh, probably…"

Turning around a few times, Ruby looked over at Mercury, who was standing oddly. It took a second for the brunette to realize that Mercury was trying to not put weight onto his left leg, and that his left foot was barely hovering over the brow ground. "What happened to you?"

Pointing back at the cave angrily, Mercury snarled at the pair "did you not hear me? Fucking beowolf!"

"Oh right!" Ruby, without even asking if Mercury was okay, suddenly took off for the mouth of the cave at a slow jog. Mercury stood back with Weiss, staring off at Ruby as she walked away without giving him a second glance.

"I'd like a fucking thank you… bitch!"

Weiss turned to Mercury, who was still silently fuming while staring at the walking away redhead. Clearly, trying to sound as sincere as possible, Weiss addressed the silver-haired man standing next to her. Weiss already knew she didn't have to hold any grudges to hold against him, especially after what he had already done for both herself and Ruby. Weiss would get the entire story later, but she knew enough about Mercury to guess how Ruby was still walking around. "Thank you Mercury. Really, thank you. We'd be dead if you hadn't helped us."

"Pffft, you make it sound so stiff." Mercury rubbed his neck for a second, and then looked down on Weiss with a tiny smile, which was no more than a slight upturn at the corners of his mouth. "Don't worry about it Weiss, I'll mend."

Before Weiss could respond, a voice called out from the cave in front of them. "Guys, get over here! It's starting to disintegrate!"

After a second where Weiss stood conflicted, not sure if she wanted to walk back into those tunnels again, the blonde walked forward towards the sound of Ruby's voice. Mercury followed behind Weiss, hissing whenever his bad leg had to support his weight, even if it was only for brief moment. Weiss thought about falling back to help him, offer him her shoulder to lean against, but thought better of it. Something told Weiss he'd say no.

Walking into the cave, which looked exactly the same as it had when they left it only a few minutes before except for the giant black body now laying against the cave floor, Weiss and Mercury found Ruby crouched down by the head. Ruby was twisting her head back and forth, trying to look at the shattered bone mask of the Grimm before it disappeared into nothingness. "So how'd you kill this thing?"

Mercury just tapped the barrel of shoe to the ground, and muttered angrily under his breath, almost too low for them to hear. "You think I just keep these things around because they look cool?"

Giving Mercury a sheepish look, Ruby asked: "They still work?"

"What, you think I would be that sentimental?"

"I don't know, maybe…" Ruby looked over at Weiss, who was giving her an odd look. It looked as though Weiss felt out of place, or at least extremely uncomfortable with the current situation. "What's up Weiss?"

Weiss just stood off to the side silently, and after a few seconds just mumbled into the ground quietly. "Nothing, don't worry about it… hey, the beowolf is starting to dissolve."

Looking over, both Ruby and Mercury saw that Weiss was right. Curling in on itself, like paper that was burning in an invisible fire, the beowolf's corpse slowly began warping as it began to disappear. Bits of fur and black skin drifted upwards from the corpse, as though the flecks were being carried on an updraft that had appeared in the middle of the cave. The small flecks would drift around on currents in the air for a few seconds before disappearing completely into nothingness.

As they all watched on, they all began feeling guilty in their own ways for the beast's death. Mercury's thoughts were particularly grim.

_I may have just killed the last Grimm in existence… I ended a survivor, a… a giant fuck you to this whole epidemic thing. You were living proof that the virus didn't have to be the end-all-be-all for us and the world. And I killed you_.

Mercury made a scoffing noise at the back of his throat, although when the other two women looked over at him he just shook his head and refused to explain what he was thinking. As they all stood shoulder to shoulder looking down on the dissolving creature, which had almost entirely disappeared except for a few claws and a couple of shards of the cracked bonemask, Ruby cleared her throat. Turning away from the beast, looking out of the cave towards the horizon, Ruby smiled.

"We've got maybe two more hours before the sun sets… lets head out, finally get out of these mountains for good."

Weiss and Mercury exchanged a look, both of them egging on the other. Neither wanted to bring down the oddly sunny Ruby, who seemed to be on top of the world. Originally pointing at the blonde while shaking his head, Mercury folded under a particularly withering glare from Weiss. Sighing heavily, he limped forward a few steps to catch up to the redhead. Groaning angrily, Mercury called to Ruby, who had started slowly meandering towards the cave entrance. "Yeah, about that… as much as I want to get out of these mountains… I would say that's a no, for tonight at least."

* * *

"Ow! Stop fucking stabbing me!"

Grumbling angrily, Ruby hissed at Weiss, whose knee was stretched over the redheads lap. Holding up a needle, Ruby tried to hide how aggravated she was at the blonde. "If you would just give me your jeans for two minutes, this would be a hell of a lot easier!"

"No thank you!" Weiss then narrowed her eyes to slits and glared at Ruby, already feeling the redhead's growing levels of aggravation. "And before you get all pissy with me, I said earlier that I could do this myself!"

"Pfft, no you can't. I remember the last time you tried to sew something up, it did not go well." Ruby shifted her leg underneath Weiss, fighting off the numbness that had come from having the blonde's foot resting on her knee and cutting off blood flow. "The scar is at least three times large than if I'd gotten somebody else to do it…"

Rolling her eyes, Weiss responded in a withering tone. "I think fixing a pair of jeans would be a lot easier than a giant bleeding gash, especially when the one getting the stitches is constantly squirming."

Ruby didn't respond to that, although Weiss suddenly jumped again when she felt the needle's point jab into the frayed flesh of her knee. "Whoops," Ruby muttered sarcastically, making it obvious that she did that on purpose.

Across the fire, Mercury laughed at the sound of Weiss's sudden intake of breath. "So, where's the scar?"

Absentmindedly, still looking down at Weiss's knee and trying to pinch the white denim together, Ruby replied: "From the outer side of my right knee, and about half way down my leg from there…"

"Hm… how'd you get it?"

Ruby replied back blandly: "You know those metal anvil shaped things on docks?" At the nod from Mercury, Ruby continued on. "I stabbed myself against the metal edge of one of those when I was jumping from of a boat to the pier."

Mercury laughed lightly, and then asked: "So why didn't you just get somebody else there to help you?"

Weiss perked up, looking across the fire at Mercury. "We weren't really supposed to be there. We were doing a vandalism job for our old boss. He wanted us to ruin a ship before the harbor froze over and it would be anchored out in open waters. We figured a winter frozen in ice would do the trick, crack up the hull..." Muttering to herself absent mindedly, Weiss added: "We had to run when we got caught."

"Hmph, sounds fun." After a brief pause, Mercury ended the momentary silence by throwing another large branch on the fire, which was crackling loudly in between him and the two women. After a few seconds, where the fire revved into life with the new fuel, the pit returned to its quiet crackling. Every once in a while a spark would drift upwards from the burning wood, and these floating ashes gave the area a warm, comforting smell.

They were still in the cave that Weiss had sprung out from, seeing as it at least provided some shelter. Still on edge, Weiss had argued against the spot, but the other two had convinced her otherwise. Ruby had originally complained when Mercury said he couldn't keep up a good pace for the rest of the day, although she really couldn't argue with him. So they ended up here, sitting in a circle around the fire.

After they had set up camp for the night, the two groups shared what had happened to each other over the past week. Ruby told Weiss about how she had woken up in Mercury's care, and had traveled up and over the mountain with him. Weiss then told the redhead how she had traveled through the underground tunnels, and eventually ran into the beowolf. Mercury seemed to be particularly interested in that part of her story, although he didn't comment on it.

After the few hours of storytelling, Ruby noticed Weiss's jeans in tatters, and ordered Weiss to take off her jeans and give them to Ruby. Weiss probably would have, until she started and she heard a long low whistle behind her. Mercury wasn't afraid of Ruby's glare anymore, and continued to chant "Take it off! Take it off!" until the redhead wrenched off her boot and threw it at him over the fire. And thus Weiss sitting in Ruby's lap while Ruby worked on sewing the holes in Weiss's jeans shut.

Ruby continued to mend Weiss's clothes, and while she poked the heiress for fun occasionally, she was careful to leave the scabs Weiss had developed alone. Running her thumb over one, feeling the scaly patch that had started to form over Weiss's knee, Ruby muttered: "These are going to make hiking a pain tomorrow, we might have to wait another few days…"

After a shrug of her shoulders, Weiss just looked off to the side and out of the cave. "eh, who cares? I'll limp…"

"Don't be so melodramatic, I'm no slave driver." Poking the scab with one finger lightly, Ruby scrunched up her brow in thought. "It's a pain, but if we really need to stop for a few days, we stop for a few days…"

Mercury quipped at the two of them across the fire, sounding somewhat annoyed. "Oh, I see how it is. Weiss gets a few scabs on her knees, let's rest up for the week. Mercury shatters his leg… we can keep going, good ol'Mercury will surely be fine right?"

Neither of the two women responded, although Ruby did break a smirk at his little tirade. Weiss again shot Ruby an odd, pained look, although only Mercury saw it.

_Alright, I'll give them some time to work things out… _Getting up off the ground, Mercury placed a hand against the wall to keep himself from putting weight on his bad leg. "Whelp, I feel like a third wheel. So… I'm going to go and see where this tunnel leads to. I'm sure it will be _super _interesting." Starting to limp away, Mercury raise a hand over his shoulder as he walked away, waving goodbye to the two girls behind him. "I'll try not go and get lost. _Have fun_ with the girl talk…"

Ruby and Weiss both watched as Mercury limped away, back into the recesses of the cave. Weiss yelled off after him as he walked away. "There could be more beowolves, I wouldn't-" Weiss came to a sudden stop when Mercury flipped her off over his shoulder, continuing to limp away.

Once Mercury was out of eyesight, Ruby turned to Weiss and smiled apologetically. "He's not that bad really. He can be funny at times, when he's not pissing us off."

"I'm not bothered by Mercury… he seems decent enough, if only a little rude." Weiss leaned back, so that her back was against the ground and she was looking up at the curved cave ceiling above her. She left her leg in Ruby's lap, so the that the redhead could continue working on her jeans. "I really wish I was out from under these cave ceilings…"

Ruby pointed off towards the cave entrance, and asked: "I can move the fire out into the field surrounding where this tunnel lets out if you'd like? It'd take me ten minutes tops."

Weiss shook her head, although she also dragged her hair back and forth across the cave floor while she did that. "It's okay, I'm good. It's too frivolous to do something like that…"

"Hmm… here, give me your other knee." Without waiting for Weiss to comply, Ruby reached over and pulled the blonde's other leg over her lap. Ruby began sewing again, and over her work she laughed at Weiss: "It's funny that you lose everything except the one thing we needed. You showing up with just a sewing kit is a little ironic."

Shrugging her shoulders, looking uncomfortable without knowing what to do with her hands, Weiss just sighed as a response. Ruby being so chipper really stung Weiss. _Did being rid of me for a week really make you this happy?_

Ruby caught on to Weiss's somber mood, and stopped using the needle. Looking up, Ruby leaned forward with both her palms pressing down on Weiss's shin. "Spill it Weiss… what's biting at you?"

"Nothing's bothering me."

Shaking her head, Ruby replied "you can't lie for shit Weiss; you've never been able to."

Interlacing her fingers and folding her hands over her stomach while continuing to look up at the ceiling, Weiss breathed in and out for a few seconds loudly, before asking Ruby what was on her mind in a quiet voice.

"…Why are you in such a good mood Ruby?"

Ruby was not expecting that to be the problem, although she answered Weiss honestly. "It's a mixture of a few things. I'm riding the high of finding you, more than anything else though. I thought it would be months before I finally hunted you down."

"…you really thought I was alive?"

"Of course you were. I knew you wouldn't go down that easily, not in a million years."

Weiss shook her head, and muttered sadly: "I'll be honest, I whole heartedly believed you were dead."

"I understand." Ruby began thrumming her fingers against Weiss's leg, and smiled over at the blonde who was still lying on the floor. "I got hurt badly, anyone would assume that… now be honest, what is really bothering you?"

"That's what was bothering me… I felt guilty that I gave up on you."

"Nope, its not that." Ruby smiled at Weiss sinisterly, and said: "I'm trying to be sweet her Weiss, but I've technically got you here in a nice wrestling lock, if I only just lift your leg up a little bit…"

"Hmph!" Scoffing at Ruby, Weiss smiled for a quarter second, but was immediately brought down when Ruby smiled back. Because it wasn't the fake smile that she had seen from the redhead over the past five years. It was the realest smile she had seen in a while from Ruby.

"There it is again!" Pointing at Weiss, Ruby exclaimed: "Something is bringing you down Weiss, and I want to know what that is!"

Sighing sadly, Weiss kept her eyes locked on the ceiling. "You seem happy…"

Ruby looked over at Weiss, and was surprised to see tears in the blonde's pail blue eyes. "I… I am happy, that I found you…"

After a few seconds of silence, Weiss responded in a thick voice, which sounded as though it was choked by emotion. "So, you got this happy… while I was gone."

"Oh… no Weiss, it wasn't like that."

Weiss started to talk, although her words still came out shaky and thick. "It just seems as though while I'm gone, you find some new friend, who makes everything better. You're cracking jokes, you're smiling, you actually seem to care about things again. It's as if I was the thing-"

Before Weiss could get any farther, Ruby cut her off. "You did nothing wrong Weiss. Ever. I was worried out of my mind about you while you were lost."

Weiss only sniffed back: "It doesn't seem like it..."

Scratching the back of her head, Ruby thought for a second before continuing. "I… when I almost died, I knew I fucked you over, and that I have been for the last few years. It may be stupid, but that… well, it kind of forced me to have an epiphany." Ruby looked over and smiled at Weiss, this one another true smile. "I know I've been horrible to you for the past few years, and I also know I can't undo all that in a few hours, days or weeks. But I'm going to work on being more human, more of a… a friend to you again, I guess."

Weiss, looking troubled, pushed herself off the floor and kept herself propped up on one elbow. "I didn't-"

Ruby just wave Weiss off, looking up at the grey ceiling thoughtfully as she did so. "Eh… look, I know it'll take me some time to fix things, and I don't expect everything to change overnight… but things will change. I promise."

Weiss would have said something, but she heard the metal clicking noises of Mercury sauntering back to the camp site. "Wow, it gets dark back there! I had to turn back before I got lost, stumbling around in the dark."

Ruby looked up at Mercury, who was standing over the redhead's shoulder and looking down on them. He raised an eyebrow at the way Weiss was lying across Ruby's lap, although he didn't say anything past that. Ruby just shrugged, and muttered darkly: "Good thing you came back, I wouldn't have gone looking for you…"

Sitting back down on his side of the fire, Mercury popped all the knuckles on his right hand, and then repeated the motion with the ones on his left. Weiss cringed at the sharp, slick crunching sounds that echoed off the gray walls. "Nah, you'd come for me eventually… anyway, what's the plan for tomorrow."

"We're sticking around here until everybody's at a hundred percent… although you're still going to annoy me either way, I can't see dragging your sorry ass around while you're limping behind us be any fun."

Mercury's fist shot into the air, and he grinned: "Yes! Being annoying for the win!"

"But you're taking first watch."

"Wha- hell no!" Mercury pointed angrily at Ruby, and began arguing with the redhead. "I was the one up first this morning, I'm exhausted and damaged to boot!"

Weiss, still somewhat wrapped in thought, mumbled at the two who were bickering in front of her. "I'm not going to sleep for a while, I'll take first watch…"

"Perfect!" and without another word, Mercury flopped backwards onto the cave floor.

Pinching the bridge of her nose, Ruby grumbled angrily at the cloaked figure lying on the ground across the fire from them. "Uhhhhh… I'll stay up Weiss. You're probably tired."

Sitting up, pulling her legs off of Ruby so that she was sitting next to the redhead instead of on top of her, Weiss muttered: "Just go to sleep Ruby. I'll watch until tomorrow."

After a few seconds, where Ruby just looked up at Weiss, the brunette shrugged her shoulders. "Alright… if Mercury isn't up in six hours, then wake me. Until then, I guess I need my, uh, _beauty sleep_."

"Six…? So are things really changing?"

"Doctor Nerd's orders."

"Hm... okay." Weiss couldn't help but smile, even if it was a small one. _Maybe things will change_...

Ruby could hear the smile on Weiss's voice, and smiled back while keeping her eyes closed. Plucking Weiss's thoughts right out of the air, Ruby mumbled to the blonde next to her while she felt herself drift off to sleep. "Ride the winds of change Weiss… ride the winds of change..."

* * *

**Thanks for reading, I had a blast writing this part. I hope you all enjoy it!**

**P.S. The chapter name is from the theme song to Dark Cloud 2. It's probably my all time favorite game, and I just replayed it again.**

**So favorite, follow, and leave a comment, because it's only going up from here!**


	12. I Won't Follow You Into The Dark

Feeling her eyes crack open, although she felt tired enough that she tried to fight waking up for a few seconds, Weiss groaned as she woke up. And waking up, apparently in the same position she fell asleep in, Weiss found herself with her back against the wall in an uncomfortable seated position. When she leaned forward away from the cold wall, Weiss felt a few painful pops and cracks from along her spine as she shifted. _Fucking hell, I'm turning thirty soon, not eighty..._

Although her vision was blurry at first, she could make out the redheaded blur that must have been Ruby watching her wake up. A crooked, jagged line of white appeared against the hazy cream background as Ruby's voice rang out.

"Morning Weiss."

Rubbing at her eyes and feeling the dust crumbling under her fingers, Weiss forgot all semblance of courtesy and simply grunted back. Through a yawn Weiss sighed: "...morning Ruby."

Across the fire pit from the blonde, standing up while leaning against the opposite wall, Ruby cracked a smile at Weiss. It wasn't often that she saw Weiss wake up groggy. Usually the blonde rolled up out of bed already at one hundred percent; ready to take on the day, military style. _'Probably had something to do with sleeping in such an awkward position'_. Ruby had thought about moving Weiss during the night, but didn't want to run the risk of waking the sleeping woman. Ruby thought to herself internally: '_Speaking of which...'_

Taking a step forward away from the wall, Ruby spoke down to Weiss, who was still seated on the ground. "So… how's the watch going?"

There was a good ten seconds of dead air in between them, where Ruby swayed back and forth as she waited for the blonde's response. It took Weiss a second to get that Ruby was making an attempt at a joke. She wasn't used to them yet, it would probably take her some time, if she ever actually did get comfortable with this Ruby again. "…Damnit, sorry. How long was I out for?"

Checking her wrist theatrically, where she lacked a watch, Ruby hummed to Weiss: "Hmmm… Mercury said you made it about three hours last night before you crashed, and that by now you've been asleep for around… fiveish hours maybe?" Ruby was tossing something back and forth between her hands as she looked down at Weiss, and smirked at the blonde's blank expression. "I woke up about three hours ago, and once I was up Mercury decided to _try_ and go hunting."

"…Try?"

The small smile on Ruby's lips grew larger, and she actually chuckled to herself lightly, even if it did sound off-key and awkward. "The way he limped out of here, he'd better hope whatever he's trying to catch is blind, deaf and dumb. Only way in hell he's sneaking up on anything."

Moving past Ruby's joke, Weiss worked through all that the redhead had said bit by bit. "Well… whoops, my bad. How did he know I was asleep? He should have been out when I... may have started to slip on my watch."

Ruby snorted, arching an eyebrow at Weiss. "Great way of putting it. Eh… Apparently you breathe in a really annoying way while you sleep." Scratching the bridge of her nose, Ruby looked down on Weiss. "You woke him up I guess. At least, that's what he was complaining about when I came to…"

"Do I?"

Ruby shrugged her shoulders and rolled her eyes at the same time. "Doubt it, I've never noticed." Ruby laughed to herself again, this time the short chuckles sounding far more genuine than before. "I think he was just looking for a reason to moan. Personally, I think Mercury would be annoyed by the sun rising if he could actually think of a way to bitch about it… without sounding crazy at least."

Weiss cracked a smile at the thought. "That would be the difficult part… wouldn't want all our neighbors to think we're unstable, they catch us shaking our fist at the sun." Finally breaking loose of the last shackles from her drowsiness, Weiss pretended to wave a sign as though she was in some imaginary protest. "I can see it now, us all running around in circles like mad men, harassing people to sign petitions and support campaigns to stop the sun from rising in the morning."

"Don't laugh, a few good things must have come from all those hippies. They would have given up on all their chants sooner otherwise…"

"Pfft!" Arching an eyebrow incredulously, Weiss looked at the redhead. She couldn't believe the stance Ruby was taking. Of course it was stereotypical for Weiss to dislike protesters, being raise more by the ideas of big business than her own parents.

But Weiss had been surprised when she found out a few years into their partnership that Ruby hated protesters with a passion. Even before the end of the world, Ruby had always thought it was simply best to '_go with the flow'_. Weiss learned about Ruby's resentment towards protesters and rioters when they had been sent to disperse a huge group of salesmen who were protesting the rising of blast burn dust... which for the most part was being artificially inflated by Schnee Industries. It was the group's first, and one of the better protests they had been sent to sort out, but it was still rowdy enough to leave them all bitter about rioters. Even Blake had been soured, and she had spent a majority of her youth either at or organizing rallies.

Being forced to weave through crowds while dodging signs and bullhorns definitely went directly against Ruby's flow. With a smirk Weiss remembered Ruby, who had been eighteen at the time, angrily firing Crescent Rose off into the air just to clear a space for the group to walk through. And even after that, it took the team a few solid hours of work to clear out all the stragglers.

And that was one of the better ones.

Weiss asked: "And what would that contribution even be! Unless they were pushing for soap and deodorant, I doubt anyone really cared enough to hear them out."

Ruby's smile flashed again as she started to argue. "Okay, maybe they didn't have the best public image… doesn't mean we should just discount what they say and call '_next!'_ Maybe they would have had great ideas on how to… do… uh…"

"You're reaching Ruby…" Weiss found amusement in watching the look on Ruby's face, see the redhead flounder around for some point that she could defend. "They knew nothing besides how to yell into the wrong end of a bull horn! bunch of tie-dye wearing hypocrites…"

"But… uh… well..." Eventually Ruby had to accept that she had lost the argument, and resigned with a sigh. "Fine, I can't think of anything… but hey, give me a break, I'm tired." Ruby's eyes suddenly widened as she caught her slip up, about a second after it left her mouth.

'_Damnit! God, I'm a moron!' _Ruby knew she should have kept her mouth shut, the moment she said that Weiss's eyes narrowed to slits.

"Wait a second Ruby, I think...," Weiss muttered, squinting up at the girl standing above her. '_I was awake for three hours, then asleep for five. Ruby woke up three hours ago, meaning…'_

Done with her mental math, she looked up at Ruby. "I thought you were shooting for six hours of sleep?"

Waving off the blonde, Ruby sighed back to Weiss what could only be a flippant denial. "Baby steps Weiss, baby steps." After a look from Weiss, which was both withering and crestfallen, Ruby huffed: "I'm trying Weiss…"

Even though she tried to look nonchalant, Weiss could see that Ruby felt guilty about going back on what she said last night. '_I haven't seen guilt from you in a while…' _

And while seeing Ruby's discomfort shouldn't have done that for her, it made Weiss hopeful for the future. It cemented in that Ruby was actually trying to change.

That things may actually be different, if Ruby really did want them to be so.

The redhead didn't' catch Weiss's reflective mood, being buried too deep in her own thoughts. A particularly loud crack suddenly resonated from the fire place, as a thick branch suddenly snapped under the intense heat of the blaze. The loud sound, somewhat akin to a gunshot, made Ruby jump, and the object that was flying back and for the between Ruby's hands almost went flying off as Ruby jerked back suddenly.

Once Ruby realized there was no danger, she actually noticed the nervous twitch she was going through by tossing the object from hand to hand. Looking down at what she was passing back and forth between her hands, Ruby stopped the motion and caught the white blur in a fist. Turning it over a few times, Ruby loosened her grip and felt it slip between the gaps of her fingers and sway back and forth under her palm. And without warning, which the brunette realized she should have given Weiss a second to late, Ruby tossed it lightly to the blonde girl still sitting on the floor. "This belongs to you…"

Weiss's reaction time was as quick as ever, and her reflexes were on par with that speed. Reaching out and feeling whatever Ruby had been playing with wrap itself around her outstretched hand, Weiss pulled back her arm to see her white pebble necklace wrapped around her fingers. Surprised that she hadn't' noticed the necklace was missing, her other hand unconsciously crept up to the hollow of her neck and felt the empty space, usually occupied by the pebble strand. Taking her eyes off the white beads, Weiss looked up at Ruby and cocked an eyebrow at the redhead.

"Um… thanks?" Twirling the beaded necklace on a finger, Weiss couldn't help but ask: "Why did you even have this though? I was wearing this when I went to…. well, when I accidentally fell sleep last night."

Weiss's question was met with a simple shrug. "Eh, I don't know really. I've never watched you sleep. Or, I haven't really paid attention before. And while I don't see what Mercury meant by 'annoying breathing', you do fumble around with that necklace a lot while you dream…" Flipping her hair over her shoulder, Ruby commented bluntly: "Looked to me like you were half strangling yourself. Kind of anticlimactic way to go out, so I decided to take the necklace off you."

Weiss hadn't been expecting that answer, or anything in that ballpark really. And because of that, Weiss was more than a little caught off guard. To anyone else, that would have been just an easy observation, a simple gesture of good will. But Weiss knew better. After being with the basically emotionally dead Ruby for the past five years, she could obviously see Ruby's half veiled attempt at being loving. It was a far cry off from the caring gesture's Weiss would get while they had been courting and dating almost a decade ago. Weiss remembered all the random 'anonymous' white roses that seemed to be left everywhere throughout her day, left along only Weiss's schedule, left only for Weiss to find. Or… the more direct, surprise ambush kisses when Ruby knew Weiss would be the most surprised.

This was a far cry from those days. But the gesture was probably the closest thing she would ever get to what they had possessed… or at least for a while.

Bunching up the cords, rolling the rough beads between her fingers, Weiss felt some flush go into her cheeks. "Well, uh… thank you Ruby…"

But Ruby hadn't spared Weiss a glance once she saw that she hadn't clocked Weiss in the face with the necklace. And because of that, she didn't get to see the royal red that had suddenly invaded Weiss's face, the rosy blush that was in no way inspired by the somewhat frigid weather. "Don't mention it…"

Staring off out of their cave, the brunette started tapping her foot against the cave floor, obviously bothered. And totally oblivious.

* * *

They continued on, chitchatting lightly, getting reacquainted with jokes and laughs. Ruby's often came out as rigid and rehearsed, or sounded even more uncomfortable and stressed than normal. But Weiss could see Ruby trying. She could see the effort Ruby was making to make the slightest joke, even if they did fall flat and make her sound somewhat fake. Weiss was hoping that last part would go away with time.

Every few seconds though, Ruby would stop laughing, or talking, and make a quick glance out to their left. She would make hasty twitches, trying to appear nonchalant, as she looked out to the meadow surrounding the tunnel's outlet.

After Ruby peered out again for the fourth time in under a minute, the blockade that was holding Weiss's tongue back finally broke. She needed to know what was up, if there was an actual, real problem that they should be taking seriously.

"Ruby, what's bugging you?"

Her head snapping back a little too quickly to appear nonchalant, Ruby just stared back at Weiss with wide eyes. "Nothing, nothing at all." Almost as though she was trying to change the subject, Ruby pointed at the seated woman's neck and muttered quickly: "How did you even get those beads in the first place anyway?"

"Hmm… I don't really remember. I just picked them up somewhere…"

"Hmph. I liked your tiara better." Ruby looked back out the cave entrance again, and started biting her lip.

Her voice dripping with sarcasm, Weiss snapped back: "Thank you _so much_ for that comment; lets me know you appreciated me selling it to bribe away a check point officer." Sneering in an annoyed voice, Weiss reiterated it again. "Now, what's _really _bugging you Ruby?"

"Noth-"

"RUBY!"

Snorting angrily, Ruby peered back out of the cave again, looking out at the morning dawn. "Three and a half hours is a **loooong** hunting trip…"

"Oh…" Weiss hadn't been expecting concern to be what was biting at Ruby. "I'm sure Mercury will be fine… he seems capable enough."

Ruby rolled her eyes while turning back to Weiss. "I let him barrow my rifle when he left. I really don't like the idea of us both being weaponless out here…"

'_Figures as much… might be a little too optimistic to think that Ruby would be worrying about somebody else yet.'_ "Are you really worried, or do you just miss your gun? We seem pretty safe…"

Now it was Ruby's turn to look incredulous. "Weiss, we've ran into marauding bandits, dangerous wildlife, roaming clickers, and now supposedly extinct monsters… Would it be normal for me to not be paranoid?!" Starting to pace back and forth, sticking to her side of the cave, Ruby started muttering to herself out loud, almost as though she had forgotten Weiss was there momentarily. "I mean… I don't think he'd run for the hills, but he did take his pack, and my rifle-"

"Stop!" Weiss glared up at Ruby, staring down the taller woman. It was impressive that she was able to, the differences in their heights only highlighted by Weiss still being seated on the ground. "Ruby, if everything you said is true, you owe a lot to Mercury. You owe him almost everything, and so do I. So be a little trusting. I'm sure he'll be back."

Ruby only waved Weiss off, responding to the blonde's lecture with a simple "sure, sure, whatev's Weiss. I guess you're probably right…"

Even with saying that, it was obvious Ruby was still seriously bugged; she started fidgeting under Weiss's watchful gaze, and didn't seem to notice the blonde's deepening frown as Ruby started to wear tracks in the cave's stone flooring. After a few minutes or frantic pacing, during which Ruby devolved to terse grunts whenever Weiss tried to get her to talk, Ruby started hopping up and down as though there were red hot coals underneath her feet.

"Gah!" Whirling around angrily, Ruby started stalking out to the entrance of the cave. "Watch my stuff, I'll be back! I've got to go find that dumbass!"

Weiss moved to get up and follow, calling after the redhead, who had already left the cave. "What, you're just going off alone?! Wait up, I'll come with you!"

But before Weiss could even get off the ground, Ruby yelled back angrily. "Stay put! I'll be back in an hour! If I come back here, and you're gone, and I have to go hunt you down again… Whelp, I'm gonna be crackin' skulls if that happens!"

And before Weiss could say anything else, Ruby was gone. And as the redhead disappeared from view, Weiss flopped back down to her spot on the floor again. _So now I'm degraded to guard duty..._

A small voice spoke up in the back of Weiss's mind. _'What if Ruby really is worried about Mercury? What if she thinks he may be in trouble, and wants to keep you out of the way?'_

Weiss snorted loudly at the thought. But the more she thought about it, the less confident she became in the sentiment. Weiss couldn't really know for sure if Ruby really was caring, of it was just some ploy to placate her for a week. Deep down, Weiss feared that all of this was just an act.

Those empty gestures had worked well on her in the past, and both Weiss and Ruby were well aware of the fact.

* * *

Stalking back and forth angrily, Weiss mulled over whether or not to head out to look for Ruby. She padded across the fifteen foot line that divided the cave between the light of the outside meadow and the shadowy recesses of the cave. Every time she turned around, she put the opposite side of her body into the sunlight's warmth. It was an odd feeling, the intense heat on one side, while her other was blissfully cool by comparison. The sensation made Weiss feel as though she roasting herself on a spit, and she actually wondered if her arms would get unequal tans if she didn't keep up her consistent, balanced amounts of sunning.

Looking out of the cave, Weiss couldn't help but think to herself angry curses over the current situation. _'…It's been more than an hour… at least! I was told to stay put, but that goes out the window if I really need to go look for her… Screw what Ruby says, I'm leaving! She can be as mad as she wants, but fact of the matter is Ruby said she would be back in an hour, and I haven't seen her.'_

Turning on a heel and moving to walk out into the dead meadow outside, Weiss was momentarily blinded as the sunlight glinted off her eyes. And just as she put a hand over her eyes, which almost felt as though they were getting stabbed by needles of light, Weiss felt herself bounce off something hard and sold. But instead of fall to the ground, Weiss felt something suddenly grab onto her jacket, and she found herself hanging a few feet above the floor. Looking down, she saw a gloved fist bunching up the material on the front of her coat, supporting her weight easily.

"Hellooo Weiss, what's up?" Just as effortlessly as he was holding up the smaller woman's weight, which was still nothing to scoff at while he was holding her entire body up with only one arm, Mercury lifted Weiss up so that her feet were underneath her again. Once he felt her take over supporting her own body's weight again, he let go of the winter jacket. Raising an eyebrow at Weiss, he asked: "Shouldn't you watch where you're going more?"

"Mercury! Where's Ruby?"

Reaching up to his shoulder and pulling the rifle off his back, Mercury grumbled angrily as he unceremoniously tossed Ruby's gun to the floor. "My god, you and Red need to learn some manners."

"Are you serio-"

Shaking his fingers in front of her face, obviously only playing around, Mercury cut the blonde off and started a joking tirade. "You know Weiss, I work my fingers to the bone for you two! Day in, day out! I'm like a freaking 50's housewife around here! I don't think I expect too much, maybe just a: 'Hey Mercury, where have you been? Are you okay? Do you need any help?' Those are the greetings I look forward to when I get back… not just 'move out of the way blondie, where's Ruby? She's way more interesting than you could ever be'."

"Blondie?" Shaking her head, trying to not get mislead by Mercury's rambling, Weiss moved back to what she had been thinking about. "Sorry I guess, but Ruby went out looking for you, and then you come waltzing back in here without her worries-"

Suddenly another voice, which set Weiss's heart at ease, called out from the meadow out in front of the cave. "You're about as blonde as I'm fat Mercury, I'll tell you that much!" Ruby's voice came out

Sidestepping past Mercury, who had let his charade slip and turned back to where Ruby had called from, Weiss walked out of the cave, again blinded by the light. Weiss had to put a hand over her eyes, which had readjusted to the dark, to keep them from watering in the sunlight. After a few seconds, Weiss was able to put down her hand and take in her surroundings. The area was just as ugly as it had been yesterday, the ground brown, grey, and tan with dead grass and bleached white roots creating spider webs across the floor.

Looking around for a few seconds, Weiss heard a voice call to her from her left, yelling out to her. "Over here Weiss. Hurry… or you'll get out of all the work…"

"Because that's what I look forward to doing…" Despite what she had mumbled, Weiss took up a brisk pace and jogged over to where Ruby's voice had echoed from. She turned around a particularly large tree trunk, a few dozen feet into the forest, and found the redhead struggling to pull something across the ground. Looking over Ruby's shoulder, Weiss was surprised to see Ruby dragging a large, tawny brown shape across the ground.

"You shot a deer?"

Still struggling with the job, Ruby grunted back over her shoulder to Weiss. "Mercury did. I'm just the one bringing it back. Apparently somebody," Ruby started yelling, peering back into the cave the silver-haired villain had disappeared into, "couldn't' bring the deer on his own! And men complain when women say _chivalry is dead_!"

A disembodied voice rang back out of the cave. "My leg hurts! And stop complaining, I did the harder part of the job anyway!"

"You looked down a sight and curled a finger, I doubt that took much strength!" Ruby, grumbling to herself angrily, looked back over her shoulder at Weiss. She took a small step to the side, and then said: "here, help me with this."

Stepping up next to Ruby, Weiss saw that they had tied the deer's front legs together, as well as the back legs, and put a thick branch in between the two barriers. Ruby was using the branch as a handle to pull the heavy beast across the ground.

"This is going to give me splinters," Weiss grumbled as she wrapped her hands around the thick branch, already feeling little needly pieces of wood jabbing at her palms.

"Yep, I know I've already got a few..."

Weiss sighed, annoyed as she imagined the annoying tingle she'd be getting for the next few hours until she plucked the tiny twigs out. "Thanks Ruby, I'm so glad we're spending such _quality time_ together."

Ruby just smirked. "Eh, you know what they say, misery loves community."

"No you dolt, it's 'misery loves company.' Who the hell has heard the phase misery loves community?"

"...Just shut up and pull the damn deer Weiss."

Weiss laughed quietly at Ruby's annoyed tone. "Aye aye, whatever you say!"

After dragging the carcass the last two hundred feet, which was much easier with Weiss's help, ruby let the deer stay abandoned beside the cave's entrance. "That should be fine… we'll clean it later or something…"

Walking into the cave, Ruby and Weiss found Mercury just relaxing, with his feet kicked up next to the fire. "Yo, what took you so long?"

Instead of answering him, Ruby swung her leg forward and let her shoe go flying off her foot, sending it hurting towards Mercury's face. Forcing Mercury to duck, the shoe sailed through where his head had been, before smacking against the cave's wall and falling to the ground. Cocking a thumb out towards the caves entrance, Ruby spat: "Make yourself useful, and go clean the deer… now."

"Eh… I don't feel like it…"

For a second, it looked like Ruby was going to fight him. But getting a crafty smile across her face, Ruby just shrugged her shoulders. "Hey, you can stay, but we're just going to be talking about girly stuff… feelings, makeup, old flames, what not. You understand don't you?"

Mercury's eyes widened, and without a second hesitation he said: "Say no more, I'm gone!"

As Mercury limped away, Weiss leaned over to Ruby, whispering in her ear. "Are we…?"

"Nah… I just wanted dumbass gone. Wouldn't you?"

Although she agreed, Weiss couldn't help but feel a little disappointed that the answer was no.

* * *

A few hours later, the three were sitting around the fire, each absorbed in their own thoughts. Forming a triangle around the small blaze, each sitting in their own comfortable ways, they all just enjoyed staring into the fire and it's dancing flames. And after the full meal, the atmosphere felt much warmer than it had been over the past few days.

Sitting up from lying on his back, Mercury propped himself up on one hand and cracked the knuckles on his other. Groaning while he sat up, Mercury looked at Ruby. "So, what are we doing now?"

Ruby just shrugged her shoulders at him, almost staying entirely still as she sat cross-legged in front of the fire. "Has anything changed?"

"No shit things have changed Ruby!" Cocking a thumb at Weiss, Mercury growled at the redhead across the fire. "Our whole reason for going to Beacon just fell into our laps! What reason do we have to go now?"

A mumble came out from Weiss, as though she was annoyed at them for breaking the silence. "It_ is_ the only place worth going to on this side of the mountains, unless we want to just keep wandering the wilds aimlessly forever."

"Uhhhhhh… well if you guys want to go, we discuss it on the trail." Ruby scratched the bridge of her nose, already thinking out the path ahead of them. "We should still keep moving west. I don't know where we'll end up, but we can't just sit around stagnant."

Weiss immediately nodded, and after a few seconds, Mercury grunted in agreement as well.

"Alright then… I'll take first watch, and we'll leave around noon tomorrow." Ruby got up to get her rifle, which she had left barely out of reach. As she walked away, Ruby thought she heard some murmur behind her. Turning back around, Ruby looked back and forth between the two. "Sorry, did you say something? I wasn't paying attention."

Weiss answered her almost instantly, a little too quick to be casual. "Nope. See you tomorrow Ruby…"

But after a weird look from Mercury, who received a glare from the standing redhead, the silver-haired man huffed a sigh. "Weiss grumbled something along the lines of 'and you'll only get five hours of sleep while doing that' when you looked away."

"Fucking traitor," Weiss spat, glaring angrily at Mercury, who smiled apologetically back.

"I owe allegiance to no one… that, and I'm sick of watching you two putzing around each other. I mean, seriously, I've been around you two together for less than a day, and it's been awkward as hell." Looking up at Ruby, Mercury made a thoughtful face before saying: "there's three of us now, you aren't needed for a watch anymore."

"But I-"

"Also, both Weiss and I have both nagged you about sleeping more."

"But I was just-"

"Did that change anything though? Nope."

Ruby, under the gaze of both Mercury and Weiss, caved in as she saw she'd been checkmated. "Fine, have fun doing the shifts on your own!" Before Ruby even had the chance to storm off, Mercury reached behind himself and threw the barrel of cloth that was one of their two sleeping bags at her. Catching it and stumbling with the sudden momentum, Ruby almost wanted to throw the bag back at Mercury's head. But catching the apprehensive look on Weiss's face, she decided against it.

Lying down angrily, Ruby stared up at the ceiling of the cave as she flopped onto her back. It took a good ten minutes for her to cool off for sleep to even be a possibility. especially since she could hear the muttered whispers that were coming from the other two. Apparently Weiss and Mercury had moved to sit next to each other, to talk while Ruby tried to sleep. Unable to make out what they were saying, Ruby could hear no more than hush murmurings, almost completely drowned out by the crackling fire.

Almost ready to give up on sleep and order one of them to go to be first, Ruby cracked an eye and peered out to them. And when she did, she noticed that Weiss was now sitting up by herself, Mercury probably lying down to go to sleep. Weiss just sat there, with her knees tucked up against her chest, and her arms interlocked across her shins.

As though she was brandishing it for Ruby to see, Weiss's necklace wasn't hanging around her neck in its iconic spot. Instead, the pebble bracelet was easily visible as it wrapped around Weiss's wrist three times, resting in its new spot quiet stylishly.

That little gesture was more than enough to set Ruby's heart at ease. Within the minute, her eyelids started to droop. And before two were up, Ruby had drifted into easy, calm sleep.

* * *

Weiss, to put it bluntly, was stunned.

She had been expecting, as she sat watching over Ruby while the brunette slept, for her partner to sleep for maybe three or four hours, and then roll over to great her before she herself went to sleep. But when she shook Mercury awake, eager to get a chance to rest, Ruby was still out cold.

And now, five hours later as she woke up, Weiss rolled over and found herself looking at Ruby's blank face.

Getting up quietly, Weiss pushed herself off the ground, careful to keep her new bracelet from shaking too much and causing unnecessary noise. Padding over silently, Weiss walked over to Mercury, and sat down next to Mercury quietly. Mercury simply nodded to her presence.

"…has she woken up during the night and fallen back asleep?"

"Nope."

Weiss looked back over at the sleeping girl, who was sprawled out haphazardly on the cave floor. Ruby was lying on her side, only half laying on top of her bag. One of her arms was curled under her head a pillow, while the other just lay palm up on the cold floor. It was the same with her legs, one off and one lying on the cold granite surface.

Twisting her head back and forth like a stork, Weiss finally got a good angle to look at Ruby's face. Usually during her sleep, Ruby's face would be scrunched up though it was in a rage, and she would constantly twitch as if she was a brawler imagining fights. Ruby always said that she didn't dream, or at least didn't remember them. But Weiss had seen the looks on Ruby's face when the redhead suddenly woke up from what must have been a dream. And those faces made Weiss believe that Ruby was choosing not to confide in her, not that she simply lacked the memory of them.

But now, Ruby's face was just simply blank. There was nothing there. No anger, no suspicion, no mask. Just Ruby's plain face, which had always looked as though it was naturally suited to a smile. "She looks so peaceful…"

Mercury looked over at Weiss, raising an eyebrow at the blonde. "For now… She's going to be so pissed when she wakes up and sees sunlight outside."

Simply shrugging, Weiss flippantly responded back: "Well, we'll cross that bridge when we get there. I'm simply stunned that she'd sleep for this long…" Joking, Weiss asked: "The hell did you slip her?"

Mercury rolled his eyes. "Yeah, that's definitely the reason she's still sleeping. I'd lower myself to giving out roofies just to get your girlfriend to take a nap."

"So then how do you explain this?"

"I don't know, maybe she fell into a coma or something?" Mercury looked over at Weiss, who was still watching Ruby, and nudged her with an elbow. "Alright, I've got to ask something…"

"Well, actually, you don't. You want to know, get rid of that curious itch that's bugging you, but I doubt you have the biological need to know." At the withering look from Mercury, Weiss laughed quietly, trying to stay quiet enough to keep Ruby asleep. "I'm just messing with you Mercury, ask away…"

Mercury's lip twitched, and then he smiled lightly. "I'd definitely get my head bitten off if I asked Ruby… I was wondering, every time I make a joke, like girlfriend, or the like, you two just get awkward. What gives?"

That wiped the smile off Weiss's face. "I… I don't know."

"Come on, there has to be some reason… I asked Ruby about what happened to you two before all this, just in case you aren't saying why because you don't want to fill me in."

Weiss just sat there silently next to Mercury, thinking for a moment. Curling up with her arms around her knees, rocking back and forth on her tail bone, Weiss muttered to herself while talking to Mercury. "… I don't know… I guess we don't know where we stand any more. After these five years its hard to tell."

"Uhhhhhhh… why do, and don't be offended, but why do you lesbians have to make everything so complicated? I walk up to Emerald, go "hey, want to go out?" She says 'no', then she says 'yes', then she say 'no' again… easy! All this stuff between you two is super annoying…"

Mercury wondered if he had said something wrong, because Weiss just sat there with her head bowed for a few moments silently. Mercury was getting ready to turn over, maybe go stretch his legs, when a small sigh came from the woman sitting next to him.

"…Mercury, I don't think you get it…"

"What wouldn't I get?"

Still speaking quietly, Weiss huffed: "Sometimes, when things were rough… well, it was bad Mercury."

"Really?" Mercury stopped playing around with the chips of shale he had been grinding to dust, putting them off to the side.

"Yeah… sometimes, and it was random when she'd get like this really, Ruby would just be… dead, I guess. For months. It was painful, to be around her. Especially since I remembered what she had been like before so well." Weiss swallowed loudly, and then mumbled: "And you couldn't help but wonder things like 'is this my fault? Does she resent me?' Because she didn't actually _act_ like she disliked you… she just treated you as though you weren't even there."

Mercury sat there silently for a moment, contemplating what she said silently. "Okay, I see what you're saying." He sat there silently for another few seconds, and then said what had been biting at him since she started talking. "but… if you were so unhappy… why did you stay? I mean, it sound cold-hearted, but why didn't you just bail on her if she made you so miserable?"

Weiss scoffed silently at the question. "Ruby is the queen of making you change your mind at the last second… I don't know, whenever I was close to leaving, she'd do this little quirky thing, or word something in her weird way, that would make you just see a small glimmer of who she once was." Weiss held out her hands in front of her, cupping at the air as though she was grasping at old thoughts. "She'd make you wonder if she'd ever come back… like right now."

"Really? You think she's being like her old self now?"

"Mercury, you may not see it, but I haven't known a Ruby this animated and lively in nearly five years…" Weiss caught on her words for a few seconds, before stuttering: "And, and I want this one to be real… I want her to stay, like this at least… where she's at least trying again."

"Hmm... okay then."

Weiss turned to look at Mercury, surprised by his simple answer. "That's it! 'Okay then?!' Don't you have some question or opinion to shove down my throat?"

"No, I don't think so... I think I understand what's going on here well enough, I don't need to pry any farther than I already have... I'll let you two work through this."

Weiss shook her head as though she had been stung. "Work through this?! You think this is some marital spat or something?"

"I don't know, maybe?" Mercury placed his hand against his neck, using his leverage to make a large pop resonate from under his palm. "Ah... I've been trying to do that for the past hour. Anyway, yeah, I think there's a shot. I'm a romantic..."

The blonde would have said something, but a voice asked from across the fire: "And why are you a romantic?"

Both Weiss and Mercury jumped, and Weiss actually fell off her seat as Ruby sat herself up. Weiss smiled sheepishly at Ruby, who was rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. "Good morning Ruby."

Ruby ignored Weiss though, although she did nod to Weiss to acknowledge her statement. "Romantic about what Mercury?"

"Oh, nothing in particular..." Mercury scratched the back of his head, trying to quickly come up with something convincing. "We were just... just gossiping over reading tastes, that's all."

Waking up, pushing herself off the ground, ready to face the new day, Ruby looked over at the two of them. "You read romance?"

Lying smoothly, Mercury nodded. "Yep, got to read something to brighten my day... Weiss and I don't have much of an overlap in taste, she's into all those old, stuffy classics."

Ruby could tell something was up, and looked back and forth in between the two of them. But Mercury was just staring back at her unapologeticly, and Weiss was refusing to meet her gaze. In the end, Ruby just shrugged her shoulders. " Fine, whatever... Come on, let's get ready to go. You guys can talk about book choices on the road." Ruby let out a long sigh, as if she was dreading what came next. "We've been stationary for far too long."

Walking past the two of them, Ruby turned out of the cave and out of sight, probably to stretch her legs and work the early morning fog that came with waking up out of her head. Weiss and Mercury turned to each other, feeling as though they had dodged a bullet. "Quick thinking, huh?"

"Hey, they didn't call me quicksilver for nothing..."

Weiss laughed lightly, now able to laugh fully, unafraid of topping out her volume. "Nobody called you that."

"But they should have! It would have been the perfect name, I'm pissed nobody came up with it for me!" Grumbling angrily, Mercury complained: "You can't give yourself a nick name, that's the biggest, most loserlly thing you can do..."

A peal of laughter came out of Weiss, who was just about to make another joke at Mercury's expense, when a sudden yell of alarm came from outside the cave.

_**"WHY THE HELL IS IT BRIGHT OUTSIDE?! HOW LONG WAS I ASLEEP FOR?!"**_

* * *

**Two Weeks Later**

Stumbling around, almost slipping on the magenta leaves that coated the forest floor, a ghastly abomination clicked and hissed as it wandered aimlessly. It's eyes, now destroyed by the fungal plates erupting out of it's temples, twitched sightlessly as it stared out blankly to the surrounding forest. Clicking aimlessly, unable to get a clear lock in on any one sound in the bustling forest, the clicker tried to lock in on any target in particular.

Suddenly, it heard something, although it was too quiet to pinpoint where. Maybe a deer, maybe a wild dog. No, those animals made too much noise while they roamed around. This creature was silent, barely discernible from the world's noise floor. Turning around, teetering on it's stolen legs as it did so, it's broken brain imagined sinking it's snapped and chipped teeth into something red and wet. It sent out new calls, to hear new signals, for new prey to hunt.

Opening it's mouth, with it's rotten smelling breath snake out from it's mouth, it let out a few broken clicks. It expected for the signal to take a few moments to get back, to hear a ping and learn for something new to hunt. Instead, it received back an immediate response, almost less than a foot away. But before it had a chance to shriek with glee, it's life was ended as a blade of grey ice flew into it's face, arcing down from on high. Crumpling as it died, the last thing it heard was the sound of breaking metal snapping in two. Then it's mind went dark, never to seek to sink its teeth into another creature again.

"...God-fucking-damn it, I broke my knife." Standing over the clicker, Weiss looked down angrily at the monster lying at her feet.

"Actually, you just broke _my knife!_" Stalking up to Weiss angrily, his leg finally fully healed, Mercury swiped the broken stub of a dagger out of her head. "I can't believe you Weiss! I bring this knife across half the continent for nearly a decade, and within three weeks of loaning it to you, you snap it like a twig!" Shaking the ruined knife in front of her face, Mercury snapped at her: "This is Mistralian steel, how the hell did you even do that!?"

"Well, I'm the best one with knives anyway. I needed a weapon, and you guys don't use them! I know you wouldn't have been able to make that kill, you guys would have shot it just to be safe... danger of the territory while fighting clickers anyway. We always lose knives!"

"Shut up Blondie, I say-"

"Quiet!"

Both Weiss and Mercury fell silent, looking back at the redhead walking behind them. She looked like she was in a foul mood. "The hell are you two doing? That's the sixth clicker we've seen today, why the hell would you be making so much noise?!" Ruby started stalking towards them, shoving her hand into her jacket pocket. Weiss wasn't sure what to expect as Ruby paced forward. While her posture would suggest Ruby was stressed and worried, the redhead's face was totally blank. It wasn't angry, wasn't upset, it was just ambivalent... although the voice that had just snapped at them a second ago didn't match up.

Ruby came up to the two of them, and as she brushed past Weiss, pulled out her hand from her pocket and shoved her own trench knife into Weiss's hand. "Let's go, and actually be quiet this time..."Ruby then took off ahead of them, without waiting for a response from either of the two.

Weiss fell in behind Ruby, and heard Mercury starting to follow them a second after. She could understand why Ruby was so pissed, and the blonde was actually kicking herself for making the noise. The last thing they needed was to be loud here, where clickers were roving around by the dozens. Luckily they had been able to sneak around the big packs of hobbling, twitchy dead. The more clickers that walked together, the louder you could get away with being.

It made sense really. The closer they got to civilization, the closer they would have to get to the dead. That was the trade off: humans and allies, people to rely on to support and protect you.

But in exchange for the safety, there was the danger. More monsters to fight... more of the marching dead to run from. Forever

* * *

Later on, after the sun had set and the dark had taken the night for itself, the entire group sat around another fire. They each were lounging out in the position that they felt the most comfortable in, Ruby sitting cross legged, Mercury lying flat on his back looking up at the stars, and Weiss curled up on her side.

The fire had been the beginning of a large argument, spearheaded by Ruby and Mercury. Weiss watched like an umpire as the two fought over whether to light one. Like most of the arguments over the last two weeks, Ruby lost. She was still staring at the fire darkly, even if she was enjoying it's warmth in the cool night air. Fire's were intrinsically dangerous now, but you couldn't help but feel safe around one too. Clickers didn't seem to recognize fires, and while the group had run into nine of them during the day, they hadn't seen a single infected. It was odd, but they could all make their own guesses why.

The group consensus was that they were within a day from Beacon, and that the city somehow did a good job of keeping down it's dead.

Their proximity to the city was severely unnerving to the trio circling around their fire lit campsite. Or really... just one of them. One of them had gotten more and more edgy as they got closer to the city. It had taken the other two a few days to realize what had been setting her off and putting her on edge.

Ruby shifted uncomfortably, looking at the fire flickering eerily in front of her with unease. "We should put that out soon... we're so close to the city, somebody may see it and come out to look."

Raising a hand and waving her off, Mercury said: "Not yet. We can put that out when we're done discussing our game plan."

Sighing loudly, Ruby looked over at Weiss, who had propped herself up on a shoulder and was looking at the two of them with interest. "You have any opinion on the issue Weiss."

For a few seconds, Weiss looked as though she wasn't going to answer. But then she lifted her head, and solemnly told the two of them: "I don't want to have come all this way just to chicken out while we're standing on our old doorstep."

Mercury made a sound of pure contentment from his spot on the ground, obviously happy with Weiss's answer. "You heard the lady. Two to one, we're going in."

Ruby wasn't surprised by Weiss's answer, although she still wasn't happy with the verdict. "I still think it's a bad idea!" Looking between the two of them, she could see Mercury was set. He had made it clear that he saw going to Beacon as their only option.

So she shifted her attention to Weiss, to try to win her over. "_If_ Beacon is still standing, and that itself is a big _if_, it's not going to be pretty." Weiss started to argue, but Ruby cut her off. "And let's just say it is pretty! Chances are there will still be a few old faces lingering around. Most people don't stray asfar from home as we have."

Weiss didn't say anything, although her complexion became noticeably paler. Ruby hoped that it was from Weiss getting nervous, not just a trick of the lighting.

Ruby pointed with a finger at her own face, at Weiss, and then back at herself. "They aren't going to be welcoming us with open arms, the two main turncoats. If we just come waltzing in, and if we get recognized, there's a good chance it won't go well. We'll be lucky if we just get asked to leave. You want to get into another shoot out, on somebody else's home turf... especially when you don't have a gun?"

Weiss squirmed a bit, both at the thought of running into an old hunter and the steady gaze from Ruby. "I don't really think there will be anybody we need to worry about…"

"Hold up," Mercury cut in, looking back and forth between the two. "I'm missing something here... Almost all the hunters ran for the hills when the disease began to spread. Don't you two think you're getting somewhat full of yourself by thinking you'd be grudged against after all of these years. I mean, come on, it's been seven eight-years out here, people's memories aren't that long."

Ruby and Weiss shared a glance, both glaring at the other two explain. After a few seconds Weiss gave in. "Well, when the end began, all of the hunters and huntresses fought valiantly. Nobody even thought about deserting or running..." Weiss laughed bitterly: "We had to protect _the people_ didn't we?!"

Her one break in character over, shifting uncomfortably, Weiss scratched her nose and looked away from Mercury, as though to hide a guilty conscience. "We were on the front lines... that was where they put the best teams. Well, those teams and the groups that nobody would miss, the one to two years."

Mercury couldn't help but comment. He whistled: "Wow, kind of brutal, a little heartless. Especially coming from the halo wearing huntsmen."

Weiss shook her head. "It boosted moral. We all liked to think of ourselves as tough, but fact is most people didn't get to see the infected more than once... they didn't live that long. They weren't equipped to handle shooting rotting monsters that looked like your grandma or niece... Anyway, what would strike you more: seeing the team that everybody raves about, everyone adores lovingly as your goals for success dying, or seeing a bunch of no names die?"

Letting out a large sigh, already knowing he was cornered for his answer, Mercury sighed: "I guess it would be the no-namers."

Weiss simply nodded. "They took a chance on a few groups like ours; they needed to look like they were at least sending some muscle out there... I think that they'd realize now that it was a bad decision to send the best to basically chaperon the C-rate teams on their own."

"Why?" Mercury raked his brains, but he couldn't think of a reason.

Looking at Mercury annoyed, although he had the feeling it wasn't directed at him, Weiss snapped: "Because we didn't _all_ die."

"Wait, what?"

Weiss made a scoffing sound in the back of her throat, as though she was explaining something a simpleton would have understood. "When other teams went out, they didn't come back! They were just done! But when they started send us in, the best... nothing is worse for moral than seeing _half_ a team return. To actually know how it happened, hear people crying over their teammates, is a lot different than not hearing a 'present' at the breakfast roll call!"

Ruby suddenly piped up, who Mercury had almost forgotten was still away. "After Blake died, Yang was done. So, when we got back, we just left... We were the first group to ever run… Or if they did, they were no names, people you wouldn't have even glanced twice at."

Sneering bitterly, Ruby mocked: "When the oh so grand "_**Team RWBY**" _left, everyone suddenly went '_if they don't think there's hope, Ozpin's golden girls, why the hell are we here?!' _After we left, the organization fell apart within weeks. Most stayed, but us leaving struck them with such a moral blow that I doubt they did much good after us."

That was when it clicked for Mercury. "Oh, I get it now. That's why you're so opposed to going into Beacon tomorrow. You think there will be somebody there who will still be bitter about all that, somebody who may hate you two for running."

"And you are not making me any more confident Mercury!"

Holding up his hands palm up, trying to placate the redhead, Mercury thought for a second. "I don't think your worries are valid." He was almost cut off by Ruby, who looked like she was about to argue, but he continued on hastily. "They are justified, but they aren't valid. Chances are slim that there are still hunters around. Chances that there are hunters who will actually hate you for what you did are even slimmer... the heroic types all died off a while ago."

"We _didn't do_ anything." Crossing her arms angrily, Ruby muttered under her breath so low it was hard either of the other two to catch, half hidden by the crackling of the fire. "They sent us all on a suicide mission. All we would have done by staying was get killed faster. If anything, we saved the lives of a lot of hunters by giving them the idea to leave. Apparently they couldn't form the idea on their own."

Off to her side, Ruby heard Weiss mumble: "But we ran. We left civilians to die..."

Ruby gritted her teeth, angry that Weiss still felt guilt for something she never had in the first place. "They would have died anyway, and all we could have done was keep them company in some mass grave!"

"Hmph...," was Mercury's only reply to Ruby's outburst, although Weiss looked taken aback. That was the first Ruby had yelled in the past two weeks. Other than being a little more stressed than usual, Ruby's mood had actually been on a steady up rise.

"I think I can guess, but I want to be sure. Obviously Yang wanted to go, and by the fact that Weiss looks like a kicked puppy, I'm guessing she wanted to stay." Mercury looked over at Weiss, who glared at him angrily, and smiled back sheepishly. "Sorry, but you do... anyway, what did you want Ruby?"

Ruby gave him an easy answer. "I just wanted us to survive!" Sighing heavily, already feeling a headache forming, Ruby rubbed her temple while thinking on what to do. _I've lost, now it's time for damage control..._ Looking up from her thought process, ignoring the looks she was getting from Weiss and Mercury, Ruby grumbled:"Fine… we'll go in."

Weiss and Mercury shared a look, surprised that Ruby would budge so easily. They had expected the argument to last for a few hours, not fifteen minutes.

"But I'm going in alone tomorrow."

Once they heard the catch, Weiss and Mercury had outbursts at the thought.

"No, you absolutely are not! We did not stick within a hundred feet of each other for the last seven years because it was fun! We did that because it works and it's safe!"

"Red, that's fucking dumb, what's the point in strength in numbers if you just go running off on your own!"

Ruby sat their silently for a few seconds, waiting while the other two created an uproar. Once they had died down, Ruby glared at the two. "Finished?"

Weiss snapped back angrily: "You are not going in by yourself! That is not even an option!" Mercury simply nodded in agreement.

"Listen to me guys. If they are going to shoot, they'd probably shoot at a big group instead of a single person. They probably wouldn't shoot at a woman, and if I do get recognized, the probably would think the longest about shooting me!" Ruby pointed directly at Mercury's face and said: " Three weeks ago I wouldn't have even thought about shooting you in the face," and then pointed at Weiss's face and said: "and if somebody shoots at you, you won't be able to shoot back! That was literally one of our jobs in Caric for a week, do you think Beacon is going to be any different?!"

"I don't care," Weiss snapped. "I don't care. **I do not care!** You are not going in by yourself tomorrow, and that is final!"

Ruby forgot her earlier orders, and shouted across the fire. "It's the best choice!" Weiss fired back just as loudly.

"For who! For who Ruby!" Breaking out the sarcasm, which Weiss almost never did, the blonde only started getting louder. "Sounds like a great plan for me and Mercury! After all, things go south, and hey, it's only Ruby right! So yeah, that'll be great... do you think I'd really be okay with you risking dying!?"

"So what works then?! I am not letting you get close to the city if there's a good chance we'll get sniped!"

"And why is that your decision?! Can I not go wherever I want?!"

"Not when you're putting yourself in front of the barrel of a rifle! I'm not having it!"

Mercury piped up, seeing this round robin shouting match go nowhere. "Enough! We'll figure it out tomorrow, we've got time... we're about an hour from the outskirts of Beacon's downtown, so we can spend all of tomorrow fighting about it before we decide. At least we figured out we are going in... we'll come up with the rest later."

"Perfect!" Standing up, stretching out her arms, Weiss looked down at Ruby. "I'll take first watch then?"

Ruby stared up at Weiss, who challenged Ruby by staring back coolly. The contest lasted for a few seconds, and in the end, Ruby just flopped onto her back angrily and looked up at the sky.

"Night Ruby." She didn't receive an answer back. It was obvious from the angry look on the redhead's face that Ruby hadn't fallen asleep, but Weiss decided not to push it. As she sat down on the ground, getting ready for a long night, Weiss thought to herself: _'__Things have been better, no need to go to fast. We'll work on it bit by bit.'_

* * *

"Weiss, Weiss, wake up!"

Feeling arms shaking her awake, Weiss was quickly pulled out of her dreams. Opening her eyes, she found herself looking into Mercury's flinty eyes, perfect circles of black surrounded by another layer of liquid darkness.

Not to say that she was tired, Weiss could feel that she'd had a full night's rest, but Weiss was still a little out of it. "What is it? Mercury, can't this wait?"

"Ruby's gone!"

That snapped Weiss out of her stupor instantly. "What?!"

Before Mercury had a chance to speak, Weiss was already up, scrambling across the ground on her hands and knees to pick up the group's scattered belongings. Luckily, they hadn't unpacked too much last night. While Weiss was hurriedly shoving things into her pack, Mercury stood over her while trying to explain what had happened.

"I was sitting under that tree over there, just finishing my watch. I'd look back every thirty minutes, see if one of you two had woken up so that I'd have somebody to talk to. I guess sometime between my last check and now Ruby slipped away!"

Almost done, shoving the last few things into her pack, Weiss didn't even bother kicking the fire to extinguish the flames. "Come on, let's go!"

"Weiss, are you sure-"

But before Mercury had a chance to complain, Weiss was already sprinting towards the forest line. "Either come or shut up! She's going to get herself killed!

Feeling the wind whip by her face, Weiss began cursing fate, and praying to gods that she didn't believe in that Ruby would be okay. _'Of course you'd pull a stunt like this, I'm stupid for not this coming last night! I swear to god Ruby, I hope you're safe. I hope you were right. I hope you don't die.'_

_'I'm not losing you, just as you were starting to seem more like you again...'_

* * *

**Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed it!**

**Favorite, follow, comment, all that jazz. I'd especially like critiques, they help a lot. And that's it… I'll see you all soon! **


	13. The Lion's Den

Ruby's feet drummed against the ground in a rhythmic, almost hypnotic fashion. The steady beat of her bare feet against the ground was smooth and relaxing, as consistent as the ticking of a clock. The constant thudding was so soothing that Ruby almost lost all track of time, and lost her trace on reality with it. The redhead was sure that if she hadn't been forcing herself to pay attention, Ruby would have slowed down and begun to just meander through the forest without purpose, lost in the sounds of her feet against the floor.

But Ruby kept snapping herself back into focus. She had a job to do... and as cliche as it sounded, she had a mission to complete.

_'They'll thank me later, this was the best option we- FUCKING HELL!' _Ruby, while she didn't say anything, hissed at the sudden flair of pain that shot up her leg from the arch of her foot.

Her thought process broken, Ruby hopped forward for a few seconds, feeling something sharp and painful still sticking itself to the sole of her foot. Slowing down to a fast walk, Ruby hobbled forward awkwardly for a few seconds, trying to keep the arch of her foot off the ground as she tiptoed forward. A quarter of a second later, Ruby felt whatever had stuck to her fall off and land in the grass below her feet.

Without waiting for the dull ache resonating up her leg to fade away, Ruby took off at her full speed again, now trying to watch where she was running. She scolded herself as she hopped over a small bundle of twigs on the forest floor, still attached to their lavender leaves. 'You_ can't afford to slow down now, they'll catch up... besides, you always put pressure on a bruise.'_

If speed hadn't been the redhead's number one concern, she wouldn't be subjugating her feet to this torture in the first place. Ruby's feet already hurt, constantly getting jabbed and poked by the scattered and random debris that littered the ground. But she needed to bare the pain. Ruby had been forced to take her shoes off earlier during the escape, the thick, rigid leather of her snow boots made running as fast as Ruby needed to impossible. If she'd had a set of cleat's Ruby would have been able to blaze through this forest in half the time it was taking her now. But it wasn't as if Ruby could just lug around an extra pair of running sneakers now a days, although days like today made her wish she really could. That extra weight wasn't easily justifiable, even if it was only two or three extra pounds.

Ruby needed to get moving quickly, so she made the easiest decision. Now the redhead jogged over the dirt trails surrounding Beacon in her bare feet, her beige snow boots tucked under the crook of her arm.

Or, trials that had once been dirt. Now, after a near decade of neglect, the snaking paths through the forest had been overtaken by weeds and small saplings. To anyone else, they wouldn't have even seen a path, just an oddly formed gap in the trees. But as Ruby ran past, her imagination took over, and she could remember the surrounding trees and saplings vividly.

_'This brings back memories...' _She could easily remember her routine of throwing in ear buds, turning on her music to the point where an eighteen wheeler could be barreling towards her and she wouldn't notice, and just running her free days away. Ruby did that for most of her time at Beacon, leaving herself the time to finally think... that and really just mull over all that she'd gone through. Sometimes she'd be at the trail for barely an hour before getting bored, and some days Ruby would be gone for over six hours of simple running before one of her teammates would go get her.

Weiss used to chastise her for it, sighing in her iconic, annoyed tone. Whenever the heiress had been forced to go get Ruby, she'd spend the walk back mock heckling her partner, calling her names like 'dolt and dweeb', sarcastically tell her girlfriend that she felt neglected. Weiss had always found Ruby's habits odd, but she loved her oddball girlfriend for them. Ruby had spent enough of her time fawning over Weiss back then; they both enjoyed the few hours of break from each other.

Picking up her stride again, Ruby retrieved her old thought process. It actually took her a few seconds to remember what she'd been thinking about, Ruby had gotten so involved in her old thoughts. _'They'll thank me later, this was the best option we had. I'm not letting Weiss risk her life, she's too important to even think of endangering... she'll understand if I make it back to her before the day is out.'_

That last part was a blatant lie, and as Ruby thought on her schemes, she knew that fact well enough. This was all Ruby could do now ... break Weiss's heart, over and over again. Ruby knew Weiss wouldn't forgive her for this. The heiress would just be disappointed, cut by Ruby's sharp, frozen heart again. Every time she reached out to Ruby, she'd come back out covered in slices and bruises for herself, and for nothing in return. Always forced to go patch herself up from whatever damage she received from Ruby's selfishness...

Ruby was still trying to convince herself that this particular decision, which she had made about an hour ago, was the right one. An hour ago, when she snuck away from the camp. Once she'd left, Ruby knew she couldn't just come waltzing back in. No, once she had picked herself up off of the forest floor and flitted away into the early morning, Ruby knew that she'd be unable play off slinking back if her nerve broke. Leaving forced the redhead's hand to action.

So Ruby decided that if she had to burn bridges, she'd at least burn them thoroughly. Ruby would protect Weiss with her dying breath again... she'd already done that once this month. Ruby had left none of her possessions behind, bringing her rifle and pack so that if she did get... stopped... well, anyone picking over her body wouldn't start to wonder why she'd turned up empty handed and supplyless, with only a surprisingly valuable rifle in tow. She'd keep Weiss safe that way at least... keep suspicion off of her partner's presence in the woods.

But even as she continued to run, Ruby couldn't get rid of the lump of guilt that seemed to have settled in her stomach. It felt like a lead weight weighing her down, coiling itself around in Ruby's gut and strangling her from the inside. Again, Ruby had lied to Weiss. She'd been good for two whole weeks, put on her best effort to make the blonde happy. But all that was wiped out now. This act of betrayal, of crushing the trust she was starting to get back with Weiss, was going to be worth a month of effort just to equal. Ruby couldn't even think of paying her back yet. _I'm just not right for her... I keep trying to convince myself otherwise, but the simple truth is she's too good for me now. The only reason she's still around is that the pickings are just too slim for her to go find somebody else.'_

_'Hmph! Sucks for us that our tastes make thing a bit difficult huh Weiss? After all, where're you going to find a gay redhead in the apocalypse? Where am I going to find a stuck up shorty? Ha, I'd have an easier search than you! I'd settle for...' _Ruby realized that what she was about to think wasn't true. She couldn't be sure about Weiss, but Ruby knew who she wanted. She would only ever want Weiss, even if Weiss didn't want her back. _'I'll only ever want you Weiss. There'll never be some shitty knock off version, no replacement. You were my snowflake. You're just not mine anymore...'_

Shaking those thoughts out of her head, Ruby focused on the task at hand. _'I can't afford to get sappy now.' _She had to get to Beacon quickly, before Weiss and Mercury could catch her. Luckily, in a foot race, Ruby had them beat.

Ruby didn't take pride in the knowledge, although a younger version of herself would have sang and danced around while proclaiming the fact, but Ruby was confident she could still outrun most people without even pushing herself. Although she was a bit slower than she used to be, Ruby had been both a superb sprinter and an excellent marathon runner during her days as a huntress. That skill then had to transfer over somewhat now, even after all this time. Ruby had the edge here, running ahead of Weiss to keep her safe. After all Ruby's running, about a half hour of it, the redhead knew she'd put enough distance between herself and their camp that her jogging speed would be more than enough to keep Weiss at a safe distance. Weiss, always being so predictable, would probably try to sprint after Ruby until she finally dropped from exhaustion. Pushing herself too hard as she tried to catch the redhead before Ruby got too far away.

Ruby thought to herself grimly: _'Weiss'll_ _burn herself out without even making it close to me...'_

Now that she had hit her stride and the ground had seemed to clear, Ruby could actually look around at the surrounding forest. Ruby used to spend her free time running, simply taking the time to think. Maybe it was the outdoor air, maybe it was the calming quiet, but Ruby could remember the days when she would relish getting to disappear for a few hours just to walk her thoughts away. Her mind was always cluttered, and it was as though her brain was a computer set to cleaning mode while she ran.

She remembered these woods... she used to take jogs through them every morning, waking up and sneaking out before Weiss could catch her. She'd keep Weiss up with her late into the night, and then slip out the morning after their fun so that she could enjoy herself and the calm the forest brought her. Sometimes the trick didn't work and Ruby ended up sleeping in with Weiss, but she was usually successful. Ruby had been a light sleeper even then, and waking up early always came easy to her. _'Although now I take it to a bit of an extreme,' _Ruby unconsciously snorted. '_Well, actually, lately I've been sleeping a lot. I don't feel like it changes much, but Weiss seemed to think so...'_

As Ruby ran past an oddly shaped dead trunk, which she had always thought resembled the statue in front of the academy, the redhead finally pinpointed exactly where she was. Right now she was maybe forty minutes from the old Beacon academy. Maybe twenty minutes from her old dorm on the outskirts on the campus. Ruby was sure that if she looked, she'd find some of the old purple rings that she had spray painted on tree trunk's to keep herself from straying too far from her own path.

But more important than that, Ruby knew that she was about ten minutes from the city's eastern most entrance, which bordered their academy. If she had to go into the city, it might as well be through there.

_'That's where Weiss would think I'd go in through... if there is a cleanup, I want her to see it so that she stays away... god, I'm a pessimist lately. I wonder if it has something to do with the wind?' _

The air was stagnant though, still and calm in the morning's first light. But jogging through the forest, still at an admirable pace, gave the illusion of wind. The cold, early morning spring air was burning her cheeks as it whipped by, although the felling on her face didn't come to her in an unpleasant way. It was more the sting you felt when you used mouthwash after neglecting to brush well for a few weeks. It left your mouth feeling raw, but also more clean than you could imagine. This wind felt the same way. It washed away any of her hesitation, any of her fear about entering the city.

The sound of Ruby's pace suddenly changed, the light crunching coming from under her feet changing to more of a thudding as her feet stopped landing on the withered, fading purple leaves. Looking down, the redhead saw that she had made it to road. Tarnished, neglected, cracked to hell pavement... but it was still blacktop. '_The most important part of civilization, other than the people living in it. Roads are always the first thing we build, keeping us all connected...'_

Looking ahead, seeing the thick brush overhead beginning to thin out, Ruby slowed down to a fast walk. _'I guess I can slow down now... I'm close enough that I can afford to walk in... god, what's that phrase Weiss used to say? She used to say it when we got home and noticed Blake and Yang had probably been getting frisky. Uh... I know it would be perfect..._

Just as Ruby walked out from under the final layer of dense canopy of purple leaves, a perfect break in the tree branches above her allowed her to the outline of Beacon's tallest tower off in the distance, outlined against the early morning sky. An ancient, garish black obelisk thrusting itself up into the air, surrounded on both sides by purple horizons and streaks of ashen grey clouds that seemed to bend and warp around the monolith.

Ozpin had always said that his academy would be 'a beacon of learning, of hope and of understanding for all who wish to aid in continuing its tradition'. He'd never understood how his 'beacon of learning' was one of the most intimidating, most imposing structures ever designed on the planet.

The sight of it, and all it meant to her and her past, stunned Ruby for a few seconds. She stopped running, stopped walking, and just stood there silently while staring up at the tower. Just as she was sure she had done hundreds of times during her training at Beacon. Every day Ruby ran, she'd stop and stand there, feeling proud to be a part of what that tower meant to the world. And as she stood there, Ruby felt as though she was somehow in two places at once. Or in two times at once.

It was the oddest feeling, one that Ruby wouldn't have been able to describe if she'd been asked to. One person was standing there now, with an old rifle slung over her back, dressed in worn and tattered clothing. One who, while she was really trying to bring some light into herself, was just a shadow of who she used to be.

But someone else was standing there too, in the exact same spot. She was a bit shorter. She was a bit sharper. She was far happier, still brimming with energy that came with simple optimism. Still lugging around her giant Crescent Rose on her back, her claim to fame as the academy's greatest huntress. She still listened and smiled to rock music that Weiss thought was horribly vulgar and disturbing. A girl who still loved life and the world...

And it was that feeling of being in two places at once that finally rocked Ruby's world.

Staggered as though she'd been stunned, Ruby muttered to herself out loud, uncaring that she was talking to herself for no real reason. "Whoa... I, I've changed..." Ruby looked down at her hand's for a second, almost not recognizing them. She didn't remember her fingers being long and thin, covered in nicks and callouses. They didn't look like the hands she was seeing right now in her memory. Her old hands were softer, kinder. Meant for picking flowers and tending to wounds. To carry weapons maybe, to use them to help others. Not to use the blades to rip others apart.

All she saw now were the hands of a butcher. One who'd forgotten what they should have been suited for in this world, and became a lost, hopeless, soulless wanderer. "I haven't grown up, I haven't gotten stronger... I've just...," Ruby stuttered, blanching for a second. She didn't know what to say anymore. Not in this moment where she felt like she was living two lives.

Ruby dropped her hands, shaking her head and her useless thoughts away. _'I can't dwell now, I'll think about it later...'_ And when she chased those errant thoughts out of her head, another ran up to replace it. She remembered what she had been trying to earlier. Looking up at the sky, Ruby began walking forward again, mumbling to herself while she walked.

'I'm walking into the lion's den...'

* * *

Weiss's sides burned worse than when she had ran from that beowolf three weeks prior. It was a stabbing pain, as though a dagger had been shoved deep into her rib cage, flaring with up with almost unbearable pain with each of her hurried, panting breaths. Every time she drew air in, someone twisted that dagger in deeper into her side, trying to incapacitate her. It wasn't mind numbing yet, but the pain would transition to that soon if she didn't slow down and take a break.

But Weiss couldn't afford to slow down now. She couldn't stop for a second. The heiress was god-knows how far behind Ruby, and that status couldn't stay the same.

Weiss's conscious, which was just as egotistical and arrogant as the real, bonified Weiss was, hurled curses angrily at the redhead. Weiss was getting real tired of Ruby's bullshit. '_You fucking bitch! I swear to god, the second I get my hands on you, I'll thrash you for this! How could you ever think I'm okay with this?!'_

An even smaller voice, as if it was tired and horse from all of Weiss's running, rose up and began to mock the heiress. It answered her in Ruby's voice, although it sighed it's answer in the redhead's dead tone, which had been nice and absent for the past few weeks. _'Because Weiss... I'm keeping you safe. Because I'm keeping you __**safe Weiss...'**_

"Hmph. I'll need to change that about her...," Weiss muttered to herself out loud, barely able to even get out that sentence between all of her huffing. Weiss didn't know it came out almost intelligible, more like: "Hi... heed to hange haa... her."

Feeling lightheaded from her breathlessness, and also somewhat distracted by her own thoughts, Weiss tripped over her feet as she sprinted along through the forest. Her arms shooting out to break her fall, Weiss's palms scraped against the floor and a particularly nasty clump of knotted roots. But instead of staying there for a second to catch her breath, Weiss shoved herself off the ground and forward again, trying to force her shaking legs to move her faster than they had before with sheer willpower. _'I can't afford to relive three weeks ago! Not now, not when we have to catch up to her!'_

But Weiss's mental message didn't translate to stronger legs. Weiss shot forward for a few steps, before her knees buckled and she had to break her fall with her hands again.

That was it for Weiss. She'd been getting tired of the world giving her nothing but crap hands. Just as things were looking up, this happens. She wasn't about to give up, but in a five second fit of rage Weiss just pounded the ground, ignoring the painful feeling of her hand smacking the hard earth. It may have been childish, but Weiss couldn't help but shriek in frustration, punching the hard packed mix of gravel, twigs and dirt below her a few more times.

Before Weiss could stop though, she felt Mercury catch up to her. Weiss had passed him at some point during their running; she'd apparently been faster, even at her shorter height. Although it seemed she hadn't outpaced him by much. He'd caught up pretty quick. She heard him burst through a patch of bushes behind her, his iconic clicking still following him as he ran forward to Weiss. It didn't sound like he was going to stop as he closed the distance between himself and her.

Suddenly, Weiss felt him hook his fingers under the strap of her backpack. Wrenching it off her while he talked, Mercury hurried out: "Alright, take this off. We'll come back for it later, but right now it's weighing us down." Mercury did the same with his own rucksack, and Weiss heard him throw both of the bags off to their left, somewhere inside a bunch of brambles next to them. Weiss didn't actually see any of this though, her face still looking down and panting into the ground.

Not taking the time to explain what he was doing, Mercury then hooked his arm under one of Weiss's shoulders, lifting her up quickly and swinging her over his back. Weiss's arms naturally locked together around his neck, which had been what Mercury was shooting for.

Weiss felt Mercury shift underneath her, trying to move the tiny woman into a comfortable spot. "Whoa, you weigh nothing...," Mercury muttered absentmindedly as he jogged forward, already picking up speed again.

"What are you doing?"

At a near full sprint now, a little slower than Weiss had been running before he collapsed, Mercury spoke over his shoulder to Weiss. "You've been slowing down for the past five minutes, although I am impressed that you were able to keep up a sprint for that long. But where you're just a person, I'm still a hunter; carrying you while running is literally nothing to me." Mercury kept on running, and then said to her: "I'm not getting stuck with just you! I can barely take you two when you're each keeping the other preoccupied!"

Weiss was touched by the statement, even though she was getting jostled badly over Mercury's shoulder. He was running as fast as he could with Weiss slowing him down, and she knew that while this was faster, it was still leaving them behind Ruby.

As if he could hear Weiss's thoughts, Mercury yelled back to her, almost tuned out by the wind. "We're twenty minutes from the Beacon, even if Red does beat us, it doesn't matter by how much. We just need to catch up to Idiot before she sticks her foot into a bear trap!"

* * *

Ruby hated walking into this part of the town. The road leading into Beacon here had been built in such a stupid way. '_Whoever had the bright idea to build the main road leading out of the city straight up the only hill near Beacon instead of going around it better have gotten fired. I mean seriously, what the hell were they thinking? You couldn't drive a car up it without feeling like you're in a roller coaster, and god forbid wanting to just walk up to the top! My calves are already burning just thinking about it. Walking down is almost as much a pain.'_

As much as it seemed like Ruby was complaining just to complain, anyone listening would have agreed that her observations were justified. The roadwork of the hill hit the bottom of the hill at an almost 45 degree angle, and kept that step slop all the way up the few hundred feet long track of blacktop.

She found it odd that she got such a large amount of joy out of feeling the ground level out again. As her feet planted themselves in solid ground again, Ruby thought to herself: _'I've gotta enjoy the little things I guess..."_

Passing the first building, Ruby couldn't help but feel somewhat vindicated at the state of things. Sure this was the outskirts, but if the center of the city was anything like what the outskirts looked like, Ruby's earlier proclamation about the city to Weiss would be spot on. _'This place is worse than Caric, it's a freaking, rotting husk...'_

The city really was falling apart, and across all her years of traveling, Ruby couldn't think of a more deteriorated sight. '_I mean, I guess it's to be expected... a decade of neglect tends to do this to buildings'._ The brick walls of the shops nearest Ruby's path had fallen outwards, and the next few were the same. The whole street was in tatters really, and looking out, Ruby couldn't help but imagine rows upon rows of playing card houses, all knocked over by a simple gust of wind. _'But the academy's tower is still standing... I bet Ozpin would like that. He'd have some stupid, prosaic quote about how "empires may rise and fall, but knowledge will remain..." Man, I used to eat those words up. Too bad those words didn't do him any good. I'm still standing, I doubt he is. Actually, I'm sure he's dead. He'd have gone out defending some sacred, scholarly text from bandits or something..._

As Ruby continued to walk down the street, her rifle in hand, she continued to do an inventory of her old acquaintances. All the people she had worried about meeting again for the past two weeks. _'CFVY... all dead, except for maybe Fox, he only went MIA... although he'd probably do well in this world now, wasn't much of a talker to begin with. JNPR, I have no clue, they all ran after us. CRDL, I hope those dicks are dead, follow in Dove's footsteps. SSSN, deadish... SPRT, REPR, FLWR, GRDN, CMCL, aaaaaaaand RMNC... God, it was a pain chaperoning all of those teams, holding their hands as if they were children throughout the chaos.'_ Ruby snorted at the memories of consoling the wide eyed newbies; getting them just mentally healthy enough to then send them back out into the fray.

'_Hmph_,_ some of them were older than Yang was, they were all older than me... most of them weren't even worth nodding at, I don't remember most of the people on those teams...' _Ruby actually started to go over names as if it was a game, going through the dead as though she had a stack of stat cards. She'd imagine the name, remember them for a minute, and then put them out of her mind.

_'No point in mourning over them after all this time, I didn't for the last decade. It wouldn't be fair for me to feel bad for it now...'_

* * *

Running alongside Mercury, having already caught up on her breath, Weiss felt the ground underneath her feet turn to asphalt. She heard Mercury make some observation, some witty remark, but it didn't register. The one time heiress wasn't out of air anymore, but she did feel a growing sense of dread as she ran towards the city. For a half second, Weiss saw what must have been Beacon's main tower in a gap in the tree branches overhead. _'Great, so we're at least somewhat close... now we've just got to grab Ruby and make a break for it. We'll make the split second decision if we want to go forward or back once we have her.'_

Weiss almost felt as though she was overheating, her winter coat holding all her heat and slow cooking the flushed runner. Again, heard Mercury mutter something next to her, this time sounding as though it was directed at her.

"What Mercury?"

Mercury's voice, still level, breathed out easy. He sounded as though he hadn't been running at a near sprint for almost a half hour, staying just slow enough so that his silver head didn't outstrip Weiss and take off into the distance with her left in the dust. "Are you sure we want to go into Beacon like a pair of track stars? Running after her like this?"

"WHAT?! SO YOU THINK WE'LL JUST BAIL ON HER LIKE THIS?! AFTER ALL WE'VE GONE THROUGH TO GET HER?!"

"Whoa, okay, you did not take that the way I meant it..." Hesitating for a second, Mercury tried asking what was on his mind again. "I mean, Ruby did raise a few valid points last night. They probably won't shot at her as she is right now right? We go in after her gun's blazing, and she end up in more trouble than if she'd walked in with us..."

Weiss stayed silent, and the mixture of tension and anger emanating off the blonde made Mercury think that she had no intention of responding. But without any prompting from Mercury, and without warning him either, Weiss slowed down suddenly and veered off the road to her right. Mercury slowed down to Weiss's walking speed, falling in besides her as she stepped off the worn asphalt path.

"And we're slowing down because? Am I winning you over with my world class debating skills?"

Snorting angrily, Weiss kept walking forward without looking back. "As much as it pains me to admit it, you may be somewhat right..." Weiss looked up above her, seeing the canopy of dense purple leaves beginning to fade away behind them, already seeing gaps in the once solid overhang. "So while we are going to get Ruby, it's probably best if we first..."

"So, good old Mercury was right wasn't he?" Leering at Weiss happily, Mercury gave the blonde an exaggerated and obviously overdone smile. "Can I get a 'you were right Mercury?' I feel as though I deserve one after all this."

"Go fuck yourself."

Mercury scoffed at the blonde's rude reply. It felt sorely out of character for the prim and proper princess. "Alright, yeah, I'll go do that..." As he trailed off, Mercury looked over the horizon and saw Beacon academy's tower outlined against the dark morning sky. "Yeesh, that thing's an eyesore. I mean, seriously, why the hell is that thing still standing, couldn't be that hard to knock down right?"

He didn't get an answer back. Mercury had been expecting some snooty and high strung response from Weiss, probably something along the lines of: 'Beacon's tower is one of the most iconic and revered monuments on our planet, it is a good thing that our world didn't lose that great piece of history.' Instead, as he looked down at the substantially shorter woman standing a few steps in front of him, he saw her just staring off into the distance. But it wasn't as though she was lost in thought. It looked like Weiss had locked in on something, close to the horizon.

"Hello, earth to Weiss?' Mercury leaned in and waved his hand in front of Weiss's face, which had gone totally blank as she stared off into the distance. 'Can you read me soldier?"

Still no response. Mercury tried to follow Weiss's gaze. He crouched down to Weiss's height, who was still staring off hungrily in the distance, and tried to line up his own line of sight with hers. At first, all he saw from atop the giant hill they were stand on was Beacon's largest, once grand eastern entrance. Which had really fallen apart. Looking out, Mercury was no real critic, but he was qualified enough to say the city really did look terrible. Fallen over buildings, abandoned cars, and numerous signs of chaos adorned the street. And where damage didn't destroy the city, it looked like nature had. He could see crisscrossing green ivy strands covering every surface the vines seemed to be able to get a hold of. But looking down a bit, squinting his eyes as he looked directly under where the sun had started to rise from, he saw what Weiss had gotten hooked on.

Off in the distance, barely visible alongside the glare of the rising sun, Mercury could see a bobbing tangle of red hair off in the distance, seeming to dance over her back and along her figure in some far off breeze.

The second Mercury saw what Weiss had gotten hooked on, he reached out and grabbed Weiss's shoulder. It was a good thing that he had; Weiss totally forgot everything she'd said a few seconds ago about thinking out a plan. Weiss hissed as she felt his grip on her arm.

"Weiss, we need to**_ think_**."

His words seemed to make it through to her, Weiss seeming to pull less against him under his hand. Weiss's eyes narrowed to slits as she looked out towards Ruby. She seemed to think for a second, and then brought her right hand up to her face. She hooked two fingers into her mouth, breathed in deeply so deeply that Mercury for a second wondered if Weiss wasn't an A cup after all... and then blew.

* * *

_'I didn't bring my lighter with me?' _Still walking forward, Ruby had started searching through her belongings as she petered along, her gaze flicking up to the road periodically. Ruby had swung her pack, an old messenger bag she'd picked up along the road, around her shoulder so that it was hanging down her chest. _'Oh yeah, I remember now, I let Weiss keep it since she makes the fires...'_

"Tch!" Pulling the bag off her body, and then immediately sliding her head through strap's loop, Ruby ran her fingers over the thick yellow strap absentmindedly as it fell back into place on her back. Ruby had always liked her bag. She liked how it only dug into one of her shoulders, so that she could have her rifle strap grate along the other. Kept her from feeling lopsided as she walked along. Ruby had picked it up about a year into the apocalypse, back when Yang was still with them, and had held onto it ever since. Something about the borrowed bag was sentimental to her, something that made her value it nearly as much as her rifle and pendant. The faded bumblebee grey and yellow stripped nylon had been covered in dozens of scribbles from a black sharpie, most of which she had no clue what they meant. The little sketches ranged across dozens of topics, and showed off the artist's obvious skill. Most of the large ones were geometric designs, of bears, wolves, stars, ships, and anchors. The drawings often followed a phrase or a word, some only a single letter. A few of the scraps were interesting, or funny... she couldn't begin to imagine what "TENT BABY" even meant, which was scratched into the chest strap with big block letters.

But just as many of the artworks were sad. A wilted rose surrounded by fallen birds was traced out along the front top of the pack, just above the first zipper. A skeletal bunny with a carrot hanging just out of reach was painted on the left rim of the bag. Even more dismally grim, a G.R. and an M.R. were drawn into tombstones on the back of the bag, followed by the dates of their lives. One of the lives was long, clear into its forties. The other was so small in comparison, barely making it to ten. Ruby sometimes felt as though the ink was burning itself in between her shoulder blades. She sometimes felt the lives burning into herself, as though they were just as important to her as to whoever put them there.

Ruby had always wondered why she kept the bag around. Really, the names meant nothing to her. And if they were that bad of an influence on her mental health, all the more reason to get rid of it. But against the dozens of chances to replace the bag, Ruby instead simply replaced and restitched the broken parts. The redhead had decided that the grim sketches somehow kept her focused. They kept her alive, or at least kept her from ever even thinking of giving up. Because while they obviously never had even planed on dying, Ruby could feel the heartache of whoever had scratched in their names as clear as day.

_'I wish I knew who G.R. and M.R. were, to whoever owned this bag... M.R. was a kid, maybe a son or a daughter. Maybe G.R. was a wife... At least, whoever those two were, they died on the same day. Maybe they wouldn't have wanted to be apart.'_

As she took another step forward, still deep in her dark thoughts, a faint, piercing note rang out across the city. Ruby snapped out of her reflective mood, her head twitching up while trying to catch the sound. From far away, Ruby heard the soft melody, although it echoed so much that she had a hard time pin pointing where it came from.

It was a simple chime, which Ruby finally pinpointed as echoing out from the hill that she had just walked down about ten minutes prior. Only four notes. Two short, and two long. Ruby was so out of it, so lost in her thoughts, that at first she didn't remember what that melody meant. It repeated once, twice, and a third time before its significance finally dawned on her.

_'FUCK! How the hell did they catch up to me?!' _Ruby's thoughts scrambling, she began to walk a bit faster, although that was more her tension driving her muscles to move faster, not herself actually thinking about speed. _'Okay, fact that she's whistling means that she's stopped and isn't just running after me... still, how the hell did she catch up?! I had a fucking lead!"_

Her thoughts distracted, Ruby didn't notice as she kept walking forward that there were moving shadows off to her right. Down an backstreet, something that had been stumbling around in the darkness of the closest alleyway twitched as it saw a figure move past the side street's entrance out of its own periphery. Ruby would have seen him first if she hadn't been preoccupied by other thoughts. But she herd him a second later, at he suddenly bellowed in animal rage.

Ruby stumbled back for a second, looking at the gap in the wall where the infected ran out after her from. She reached up to her shoulder, already tugging on her rifle's strap to pull it into her hands. But as she watched the first infected rush out of the dark, Ruby saw a second, and then a third figure follow. And without a second thought, Ruby turned on a heel and bolted, heading deeper into the city.

Ruby started running, hearing the infected at the back of the procession bounce off the alley wall as they all started barreling after her. She would have turned to shoot one, maybe two, but three was a bad idea. Running, hearing the snarls of the ravenous monsters chasing after her starting to fade slightly as she widened the gap between herself and the infected, Ruby glanced back.

It was a mistake, the second she looked back she felt something thin and stringy press against her shin. Whatever the thing was gave a bit, but not much, and Ruby suddenly flew forward with her leg hooked behind her. Her momentum caused her to sail through the air for a few feet before she actually fell towards the ground hard. Ruby was so surprised by her tripping that she barely got the chance to protect her face from the sudden fall.

She only half succeeded. As she flew towards the ground head first, she did protect the upper part of her face with her crossed arms. But while she protected her eyes and nose, that wasn't what collided with the ground first. With the sound of a heavy box landing from a ten foot drop, the redhead's chin bounced off the rough and jagged black surface into the road. Along with biting a good chunk of skin out of her cheek with the sudden blow, Ruby felt the skin at the very bottom of her jaw split open from the blunt force. To put it simply, the hit hurt.

Her torso slammed into the ground a second later, so hard that all of her breath whooshed out of her lungs. Lying on the ground stunned for a second, almost too shocked to move, Ruby flared back to life with a quick groan.

Ruby flipped herself over with one arm and began to backpedal across the ground while she looked in front of her, back where she had come from. Whatever had tripped her had also knocked over the following infected, and they all were sprawled out on the ground a few feet behind her. But they, already blind to surprise through their madness, got up much faster. The first one, closest and probably the most infected, shoved itself off the ground and jumped at her.

Aiming with one arm, which basically meant she wasn't aiming her rifle at all, Ruby fired a first bullet at the leaping infected. A lucky shot, it's head jerked backwards as Ruby landed a hit. But instead of celebrating, Ruby yanked back the bolt and pulled the trigger a second time, pointing her rifle blindly at the second infected which, had picked itself up off the ground and begun rushing after her as well. This bullet didn't land as cleanly, and while it did fall, it fell screaming. Ruby hoped that it was down and wouldn't get back up.

Before Ruby had a chance to fire at the third, it was already past her rifle barrel. It, an infected woman, shoved the rifle away, pushing Ruby's entire right arm to the side with the gun, and fell down on top of her.

Reaching out and locking her arm, Ruby wrapped her hand around the woman's neck and kept the infected's teeth away at arm length. If it had still been able to put together a coherent thought, she would have grabbed Ruby and pulled her in. It's own weight pressing down on Ruby, she would have found it easy with her leverage. But lost in mindless rage, the infected simply let her arms batter against Ruby, smacking and clawing at her chest and neck. Ruby's other arm was still at her side, weighed down and tangled awkwardly by the rifle's strap.

Looking up, Ruby saw the face of the infected woman snarling down at her. The woman's crooked and broken teeth, mixed in with rotting, cankerous flesh. And watching the snapping mouth take bites at the air separating them, the space between Ruby's shoulder blades suddenly seemed like it was on fire. She felt G.R. and M.R.'s names blaze into her back, and that inferno leapt into her eyes. _'Weiss can see this! I cannot die here! I can see myself die for her, but I am NEVER DYING IN FRONT OF HER! I WILL NEVER MAKE HER SEE THAT!'_

Full of fury, Ruby brought her foot up in between herself and the hissing, clawing woman, and shoved. As hard as she could, Ruby put enough force into the kick to get the infected off her, and the snarls skipped a beat as the woman flipped over Ruby's head. The infected passed out of Ruby's line of sight, but she did hear a hard thud as the infected landed hard against the road's surface.

Ruby pushed herself off the ground, almost toppling again as she both spun and rose off the ground in one jerky, disjointed motion. Spinning on one knee quickly, Ruby almost toppled herself as she spun around again. The infected woman had already started pushing itself off the ground as well, one of her arms clawing at the air in between them as she came to her knees. Not taking the time to actually grab the rifle correctly, the strap still tangled weirdly around her arm, Ruby just wrapped her fingers around the long metal barrel of the gun. She could feel the sight under her palm, the little protruding piece of metal at the end of the barrel digging into her skin. So swinging wildly, Ruby used the cedar butt of her gun as a club and bated at the infected's head. She connected, the woman's face suddenly turning to the left from the blow. Ruby heard a satisfying crack at the same moment, although she hoped that was the sound of bone breaking and not of her wooden stock splintering under the sudden strike.

Bringing her rifle back again, getting ready to deal a final blow, Ruby heard a harsh ping sound. It was an odd noise, one that Ruby couldn't quite place although she'd heard it before, almost like a rusty stapler getting pressed into wood.

In response to the sudden sound the woman's body below her suddenly twitched sharply before it finally fell perfectly still, and Ruby felt several flecks of blood splatter against her pant legs. Landing face down, Ruby could see clear as day a bullet hole already leaking putrid, rotten blood out of the infected woman's back.

Looking up, Ruby already knew what she was going to see. It took her a second to find them, but she knew they were there. Finally she saw them, two dark shadows standing under an overhang of bricks. At first they only looked like distortions in the world, and Ruby would have dismissed them. But her brain picked up on something her eyes didn't, and after a few seconds of starring into the darkness, the shadows shifted.

Stepping forward, Ruby saw two figures, both dressed in black and aiming at her, slowly walk forward and into the middle of the road about thirty feet away. Both had their faces covered, one by a mask and another by a cowl and scarf.

Her could-be executioners were only a stone throw away.

Her would-be executioners. In one fluid motion, they both raised their arms and aimed their respective weapons at Ruby. One stood with a staggered stance, gripping an old pistol with both of his hands and aiming at her face. The other stood just to the left of the first, aiming a rifle as nice as Ruby's own at the redhead. Ruby noticed good six inch long silencer screwed onto the end of the rifle. She couldn't remember the last time she saw as nice a weapon mod in this apocalypses. It really was a beauty, and Ruby understood now what had hit the infected woman and ended mod was probably more expensive than the entire rifle it was attached to, if it did it's job that well. _'I'm about to get gunned down and I'm admiring riflry? Maybe I really haven't changed that much...'_

Ruby's stomach sank. _'I guess this is my hand... better play like a fucking cheat if I want to win...'_

* * *

Weiss was already down the hill, past the first few buildings, and flying through the city outskirts on her short legs. She'd started running the second she saw Ruby run, and saw the figures run out of the dark alleys after her. Unable to see Ruby now that she didn't have the high ground, Weiss had to just hope that Ruby wouldn't turn off the main street.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, Weiss involuntarily flinched as she heard one loud crack. She barely even twitched after she heard two. After all these years, Weiss knew the sound of Ruby's rifle almost as well as she recognized the call of the redhead's own voice.

Weiss waited for a moment, not slowing down with her anticipation, but running forward on bated breath. She waited for the final shot, or any more if Ruby oddly missed... and it felt like the world had come crashing down around Weiss when she didn't hear a third ear splitting crack.

Still running, Weiss began pleading with the universe, or whatever she thought it was, in her mind, to Ruby. _'Hold on Ruby! It doesn't matter if it bites you, they aren't clickers yet! Just don't die, and you'll be fine! We can patch you up, we can...'_

From the sounds of Ruby's shot, she guessed Ruby was maybe five minutes away, and either directly in front of her, or a side street in either direction. She hoped she would make it, unaware that Ruby had run into an even greater threat. One that Weiss would be no help in, weaponless and unable to hit the broad side of a barn even if she was armed...

* * *

Ruby started backpedaling, walking backwards while she kept her rifle aimed at the one with a rifle. _'If one's going to shoot me, I'd rather shoot rifle girl and have to duke it out with pistol boy. Distance will be my friend in this fight...'_

Those were really the only generalizations she could make about the two. The woman was about a head taller than the man standing next to her, and from this far away Ruby could still tell that she would have been extremely beautiful. She had the figure everyone seemed to go for, tall and slender, yet not thin like a twig. Ruby would have fallen in that category if she'd been maybe six inches taller, but her five foot seven left her at average height and average build. Pretty, but not drop dead gorgeous...

Ruby scolded herself, annoyed at the errant thought. 'Now_ is not the time to make comparisons and get jealous! 'Hey I love your hair, are you going to kill me?' God, I'm an idiot...'_

But Ruby got hung on the looks of the others. It was really the only thing she could do, starring down the barrel of her rifle. Ruby could tell that she fell shorter than both of them, although she was probably only an inch or two shorter than the man. He was lean too, although he seemed to be proportioned nicely, like an acrobat.

Still walking back, Ruby was making sure to pick up her foot entirely and place it down slowly, so that she didn't find herself tripped over again. _'Although, if they were laughing at me landing like a turtle on my back hard enough, they may decide not to shot me.'_

Suddenly, Ruby heard a disgusting, gurgling retch coming from her right. Looking down, Ruby saw the second infected, still writhing on the ground. Apparently she'd only mortally wounded it, not actually dealt it a killing blow. It's death throws were distracting to say the least, as it hacked and snorted on blood leaking from it's mouth, writhing on it's side in a growing pool of dust and it's blood.

The man, taking a small step towards her, pointed at her with the secondary hand that had been wrapped over the other. He still pointed the gun at her as confidently with just his left hand, and immediately the only think Ruby could think of while she looked at his ski mask covered face was 'gangster'.

"Drop the rifle."

_'Uh, not only is he completely covered up so I can see nothing about him, he even sound's bland. If I'm going to get shot, I'd like it to be by somebody with a bit of passion! If you're gonna kill me, I'd like it to be with a sneer, a grimace, a laugh. Now some blank voice without a face... maybe I'm being a bit melodramatic.' _Opening her mouth to respond, Ruby started saying: "Not-," but was cut off by another lurching gurgle from the infected below her.

"No-," Ruby tried again, but was just as quickly cut off by the writhing figure again. Ruby started speaking two more times, but got overrun by the infected again both times. Finally, with rage, Ruby took her sight off the two gunmen, and before they had a chance to react shot the already dead infected in the head. She flicked the rifle back up at the woman again, pulling back the pin in the same motion. The spent bullet flew across her field of vision, and as the gold blur flipped end over end past her head and over her shoulder, Ruby finally got to speak.

"Not a chance. Do you think I'm that stupid? I made it this long by not letting go of my baby, I think you'd have already assumed that I'd say no."

The man took another half step forward. "Don't think we won't shoot you." His tone of voice made Ruby believe that he expected this would devolve into a fight. Those were the worst brawls to end up in, where one person had already resigned themselves to the shootout.

_'It's always better when everybody involved wants to run for the hills.' _Lifting her head up slightly, although she didn't shift her arms and shoulders in the slightest, she quipped: "I would rather you didn't." As Ruby spoke, she felt a trickle of blood shake off her chin and drip down onto her shirt. An errant thought, Ruby wondered if the blood would stain.

They all stood there silently, at a standoff. And as she stood there, Ruby started getting the strangest vibes that something was off. At first, it inspired worry in her, that something was triggering Ruby's old huntress senses. Maybe the redhead was feeling there were more thugs nearby that she should be worrying about. Ruby quickly looked at the buildings around, checking the edges of her vision and periphery for movement.

But there was nothing. Ruby knew there was nothing really, because she was sure that her source of unease was the duo now standing maybe thirty or so or so feet up the street. There was something off about both of them, something that put Ruby on edge. The man in front seemed relaxed enough with pointing his pistol, which was old, black and in seriously in need of a polishing, at her with one hand. But his other hand... well, Ruby couldn't quite place it. It seemed as though he didn't know what to do with his right, and it hung awkwardly at his side.

And the woman standing next to him was just giving Ruby the hibijibis. Through all of this gunplay, and all their short banter as they threatened each other, it seemed like 'Ms. Mystery' was getting more and more comfortable. Even with a gun pointed at her head the cowled woman, who had yet to speak a word, had slowly lowered her rifle to the point where she was aiming at Ruby's gut._ 'Definitely not a killing wound. Although... I guess a strong enough rifle pretty much ruins everything it's pointed at. So maybe she doesn't need to shoot high.'_

As though she was reading Ruby's thoughts, the woman seemed to shift, and let her rifle droop down even further. Now the silenced rifle aimed between Ruby's legs, and it would probably miss if the mystery woman suddenly fired. She finally spoke up, and with a somewhat familiar accent, the cowled woman asked one muffled word through her face mask. A single word that sent a bolt of bone chilling ice through the redhead's system.

"...Ruby?"

Ruby, at the call of her own name, skittered back several half steps. _'SHIT! I knew somebody would remember me! I don't even know who they are, but they somehow remember me! I've got to get out of here NOW!'_

When the redhead backed up, taking two or three hasty steps back away from whoever the two were, the woman calmly stepped forward in time with Ruby. Calling out to the frantic woman backing away, with a voice that Ruby still couldn't place, the rifle toting woman asked: "I... it's really you? Yes, it must be, your voice hasn't changed. I could barely tell though, everything else is so different. I never really thought to imagine you older than twenty, you were so lively I somehow thought you wouldn't age; long hair doesn't suit you though..."

Aiming at her angrily, feeling even more disturbed by the calm that the woman was emanating during what should have been a frantic standoff, Ruby almost screamed back at the woman. "Thanks for the complements and insults... And who the hell are you?!"

She seemed to not be paying attention, and her shadowed face cocked to the side while she looked at Ruby. "You look so different though... you look worn, I don't think I ever remember a tired Ruby..."

"**OKAY BITCH, ENOUGH NIT-PICKING WHAT I LOOK LIKE! ****WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?!**" That final yell teared through three octaves as Ruby screamed, almost feeling totally powerless in the odd and pointless standoff. At some point during their aiming, every single one of them realized that no one had the intention to shoot. Even the guy over standing back and watching the spectacle in front of him had lowered his gun a bit.

At that final yell, which left Ruby's throat feeling raw, the woman finally reacted. Letting go of her rifle with her dominant hand, taking her finger off the trigger, she hooked a finger under her hood and pulled the cloth back.

As the black fabric of her hood fell back, the charcoal grey scarf wrapped around her face slacked as well, as if they were both holding the other in place. The hood falling off her head, scarlet red hair tumbled down the woman's back, almost making it down to her hips. And no longer hidden in shadows, the woman's emerald eyes made her easy enough to identify.

Finally lowering her own rifle, Ruby couldn't believe her eyes for a moment. It seemed like too grand a coincidence. _'But the world runs on crazy coincidence now, doesn't it?' _Unable to hold onto her thoughts any longer, she simply breathed out in astonishment.

"...Pyrrha?"

The champion's old smile flashed across her face, and she strode forward while holding out a hand to the redhead. "It's been too long Ruby... we have an entire decade to catch up on now, don't we?"

* * *

**And what I hope you all think is a great end to what I consider to be the end of Act One. The end of my first, actual writing project. **

**I didn't have much to say, and I won't drone on and bore you all. I've learned a lot this year, both through trial and error, and other authors and their great advice. I've still got a long way to go, but I think it's pretty obvious I've improved from when I wrote chapter one about three months ago. With luck, I'll still be improving through all of next year too.**

** So I'll just say 'Hurray' to a new year, and hopefully an even better Act Two than Act One! **


	14. Meeting Up Again

Ruby stood there for a second stunned, staring blankly at her old friend's outstretched hand. _'I, I guess she wants a hand shake... Pyrrha was always really formal when we were kids...'_

Hesitant and somewhat reserved, Ruby stuck her hand out and left it half way between herself and the already extended hand of her former classmate. "It's, I, w-well..."

Apparently, Pyrrha was going to be the opposite of Ruby's reserved manner. She didn't even wait for Ruby to finish her stuttering. Reaching out and grabbing the shorter woman's hand, Pyrrha yanked Ruby into a hasty hug with a short laugh. The taller woman's arms yanked Ruby off the ground, and the redhead ended up hanging about a foot in the air, looking over Pyrrha's shoulder while she felt her rib cage get crushed. And looking over the taller girl's shoulder, Ruby saw the still masked man lower his gun and slipping it into the back of his pants, either through a loop in his belt or into a holster on his back.

The old champion's strong arm's quickly squeezed the air out of Ruby's lungs, and while the hug was obviously a friendly gesture, it none-the-less startled Ruby. _'Okay, I'm not okay with you being all touchy-feely, it's not like you! I just said to myself that you were the fucking formal one!'_

Pyrrha just hugged Ruby happily, chuckling to herself, her voice echoing out loudly across the deserted street. "I can't believe it! It is you!" Not feeling the girl in her arms stiffen awkwardly by the sudden motion, Pyrrha's green eyes twinkled brightly as she crushed Ruby. "I always wondered about you, I was never really sure if you would be okay when you left! Ha, I'm so happy you made it through all these years!"

Unsure of how to react, her feet dangling in the air uselessly, Ruby just locked up and froze. Ruby's voice fell back to its old deadpan, although her usually perfect actually sounded somewhat off to Ruby. It wasn't quite as menacing as it used to sound. Not quite as natural to put on either.

"...It is good to see you too Pyrrha. Now please put me down."

Caught off guard by the redhead's voice, Pyrrha loosened her grip on Ruby to the point that the shorter girl slipped down her black jacket and to the ground again. Slightly taken aback from her cold demeanor, Pyrrha's certainty on who she was talking to wavered for a second. "Ruby, I-I just-"

Trying to not give Pyrrha the chance to be anymore offended, Ruby leaned forward and quickly gave the champion a shorter, less warm hug. Ruby's was barely more than a squeeze before she stepped back. "I really am happy to see you. You just startled me, is all... This is a lot to take in..."

After a second where Pyrrha seemed at a loss, she broke out into another smile. "Oh, uh, yeah, yeah I can see that. I mean, we both thought the other was dead for the past decade!" Pyrrha took a small half step towards Ruby, as though she was going to hug her again. She saw the grimace that passed across Ruby's face though, and she stopped herself. "I mean, I can't believe it's really you!"

"Yeah yeah, yeesh, you already said that..." Ruby ran a hand through her hair while she frantically thought of what to do. She'd gone over thousands of scenarios of entering the city. Slipping in undetected, being held up by bandits, getting detained by militia, all possibilities that she'd considered. This, getting greeted with hugs and laughs by some of her oldest friends, was not one. This was obviously going differently than she had planned. _'Maybe the city won't be dangerous for us, if Pyrrha can just waltz around the street like nobody's business._

Looking up at Pyrrha, somewhat curious, Ruby asked: "It is refreshing, and again it's really nice to see you, but... well, why are you so jittery? It's not really like the old you, which is kind of what I'd expect..."

Pyrrha simply shrugged. "People change over a decade. That, and I changed and responded to the situation I thought I'd need to fit in to." Looking down on Ruby, raising an eyebrow at the shorter redhead, Pyrrha asked: "Maybe I acted a little out of character, but what's with you? Ten years ago you would've been bouncing up and down with joy even if this was just a one month reunion. If you think about this like that, who's more out of character?"

Ruby thought about that for a second, and was about to agree with Pyrrha, when suddenly the taller woman in front of her seemed to squint her eyes over Ruby's shoulder, off into the distance. After a half second, Pyrrha's lips twitched into a smile and she murmured: "Is that...?"

Turning around, already half expecting what she was going to see, Ruby wasn't surprised when she saw a snowy white head break over a small hill in the pavement. A taller, silver haired man followed behind Weiss a few seconds behind, even though Mercury should have outstripped the shorter blonde's pace in a few strides.

Whether she was aware that there was no danger, the redhead couldn't tell. All she could see was that Weiss was rushing towards Ruby and the other two, who were all still standing in a tight circle, as fast as she could. As she called out, Ruby couldn't tell if Weiss's voice was colored in fear, anger, or a mixture of the two. "Ruby!"

"Yeah, yeah Weiss, I know," Ruby started muttering, already getting ready to apologize. _'Hopefully she isn't going to kill me...' _Ruby started to walk forward, away from Pyrrha and towards Weiss.

Although as she took a few steps away from Pyrrha, Ruby noticed the taller woman immediately follow behind her at maybe just an arms length away. She didn't take much notice though; Pyrrha had always had a hard time recognizing personal space. _'I always found that odd, you trying to be so polite, and then constantly screw up on the big one.' _

Ignoring her thoughts, and also the woman hanging over her shoulder, Ruby just yelled out to Weiss who was maybe 100 feet away at this point. "Yo, Weiss, you can slow down, everything's fine..."

Weiss didn't seem to be paying attention though, and as she quickly crushed the gap between them with her speed, Ruby saw that Weiss was getting closer and closer to whatever everyone seemed to be tripping over. The sun glinted off the obstacle in a strange way, so Ruby didn't get a good chance to inspect what looked like a strand of blazing sunlight crossing the fifty foot gap between the buildings on either side of the street. From Weiss's angle, and the angle Ruby had been running at a few minutes ago, the cord of light probably was invisible. "WHOA, HEY, WEISS, STOP!"

Ruby's yells were also ignored, and as Weiss got within ten feet of Ruby the blonde suddenly felt her legs get jerked out from underneath her.

_'Shiiiit! Weiss, don't- uff!'_

Ruby stepped forward and caught Weiss midway through the girl's airborne tumble. Catching the blonde girl in her arms against her chest, Ruby kept the short heiress from slamming into the ground as hard as the redhead had earlier. But in catching Weiss, Ruby absorbed all of the shorter blonde's momentum, and was flung to the floor. Landing with a grunt on her back spread eagle, Ruby felt her shoulder blades and head slam against the ground simultaneously. If that wasn't enough, it was only a second later when she got the air knocked out of her as Weiss finally hit the ground and slammed into the redhead's chest.

Weiss slowly pushing herself up from lying on top of Ruby, and the redhead underneath her wheezed out sarcastically: "My... hero..."

Looking up at the pink sky above her, Ruby could see little silver flashes all across her field of vision. Not taking them seriously, her senses somewhat rattled, Ruby only thought to herself that they were... well, pretty. _'Like thousands of silver fireworks... all going off at once...' _Taking her eyes off the sky, Ruby's gaze shifted down and moved to rest on Weiss's face. _'But that's a thousand times more... yeah... what...?'_

Already feeling a headache beginning to form, Ruby first thought was worry that her partner had been hurt. It really should have been nothing, nobody would have noticed or even worried about it, but Ruby's mind blew the tiny injury out of proportion. A small stripe of red, barely a hair wide was marked across Weiss's cheek, starting at her ear and trialing down towards the tip of the blonde's slender nose. It dipped down into the scar running along and under Weiss's eye. _'Shit Weiss, did you cut yourself running?'  
_

Reaching up, a little dazed and not entirely in control of her full senses, Ruby rubbed her thumb across the slice, murmuring something that sounded like an apology while she massaged the blonde's cheek. _'You'd kill me if you ended up with another face scar, you already hate the first...' _

Ruby couldn't remember the last time she had touched Weiss's face. She couldn't even think of a time where she would have gotten away with it. Apparently getting concussed was more than enough to stun Weiss for a few seconds, let her get this tiny moment.

And Ruby loved it. Feeling Weiss's cheek shift under her fingers, pulling the blonde's soft, pale peach lips into a crooked smile by Ruby's circling thumb. Feeling the little sparks of lightning arc back and forth, from Weiss's face to Ruby's fingers and back again. Ruby didn't want it to end.

But... it had to. Before they both came to their senses, and this wasn't romantic any longer. So Ruby let her hand fall away, expecting to see a clean pink cut with its blood wiped away. Instead, the redhead just saw a large red smug across Weiss's face, adding even more to Weiss's blush. _'Oh... you aren't cut?' _Suddenly, as though the universe was personally giving her the answer, Ruby felt a trickle of wetness trail down her own neck. It felt like a warm finger, slowly trailing its way down her chin by gravity, tickling her skin the entire way down_. 'Ah, I get it... that's my blood. Just a splatter probably. That's good...' _

Ruby was so out of funk, that she barely registered the stunned look on Weiss's face as she looked down on Ruby.

But she did catch it. For the most part, it scared her. Ruby wondered if she'd been too bold. Had it been wrong to think she could get away with something like this? Just because she wasn't entirely in her right frame of mind?

But a smaller part of her brain, which lately seemed like a sleeping dragon waking up from a thousand year long rest, fell for the look on Weiss's face. It reminded her of a long time ago, the same look she'd get every time she'd steal a kiss from her girlfriend. Ruby's vision slowly faded to black as she remembered, and she couldn't help but smile to herself at the memory. Looking up, Weiss's face now was the same. It was...

"...loving..."

* * *

Feeling Ruby's caressing fingers leave her face, Weiss could only look down at Ruby's plated silver eyes in astonishment. In those few short seconds they had taken away all of Weiss's anger, all of her worry. Ruby's fingers had left Weiss at a loss, both for words and for thoughts. The only thing her jumbled mind could get out was that she wished all this would last longer. Even if this moment was the result of Ruby's rash and foolish behavior, it didn't change how _this moment_ felt. Weiss wished that this could just erase all the past eight or so years, and last forever.

It felt like a different time, like something that shouldn't be happening be happening now. It was something that happened in that long lost world, which had been filled with happy and silly childish romances and dreams. The days that had simply been fun and carefree... at least, compared to now.

Before Weiss could get any more lost in her thoughts, some of them wistfully wishing that Ruby wouldn't stop, the blonde's worry came rearing back to life. Now in a different way than before though. Not fear for the black clad figures around her, or the prospective danger from infected around her. But it was fear for the girl underneath her.

As Weiss watched her, Ruby's eyes seemed to lose focus. The redhead gazed up at her face for a few more seconds, and Weiss heard Ruby mumble something. She whispered something barely audible, and as the word slipped out, a crooked, uneven smile crept across the redhead's face.

"...loving..."

But before Weiss could get anything else out of the girl below her, Ruby's eyes rolled up into her head and she heaved out a heavy breath.

She couldn't believe this. "Hey, Ruby, wait, wake up, please don't pass out on me now! What were you going to say?!" Patting on the side of Ruby's face gently, Weiss couldn't believe her luck. After all that, Ruby was out cold. "Come on! You've got to be kidding me!"

Breaking her train of thought, and her focus on the girl below her, Weiss felt a hasty tap on her shoulder. "Um, is she alright?"

Looking up, hearing someone cackling in the background, Weiss saw a curtain of scarlet strands swaying in front of her face. At first, the blonde reeled back from the garish and out of place color. But when she saw the face in the center of the red tangle, her emerald eyes wide with concern as she looked down at the heiress and the passed out girl, her momentary flash of fear turned to befuddlement. "...Pyrrha?"

Bending down at the waist to the point where she was in what looked like a deep bow, Pyrrha flashed an extremely warm smile at her for a half second, and asked her again. "Is she alright? Ruby, I mean, is she okay?"

"I-I think, I mean I'm pretty sure I, t-that I knocked her out..." Weiss looked down for a second, realizing that she really didn't know if Ruby was okay. "I mean... Mercury!" Looking around franticly, Weiss found him hunched over, out of breath panting a few feet back. "Come help me!"

Weiss heard a small gasp from Pyrrha, which she had no problem guessing what the cause of it was. '_Probably out of surprise at the company we're keeping. I probably wouldn't have reacted well to Mercury either if I'd ran into him a different way than Ruby introduced us...' _Weiss hoped Pyrrha would stay open minded until she could defend Mercury.

Mercury straightened out, and by his red face and the tears streaming down from his charcoal black eyes, Weiss realized he wasn't winded in the slightest. He wasn't tired at all. The idiot was barely holding himself together from fits of laughter.

"You, you, ha... My god, man, what a reunion!" As he started walking towards Weiss, who was still on top of Ruby, straddling the redhead's waist, Mercury continued chuckling to himself. "You just knocked out cold the girl we were running to save! Some rescuer you make!"

"Shut up Mercury!" As Mercury kneeled down on next to Ruby, Weiss saw his finger's get wrapped in a silvery glow before they disappeared under Ruby's neck. Still chuckling to himself, Mercury reached out and gently felt around the base of Ruby's head with his careful fingers.

After a few seconds of silently watching Mercury, Weiss asked: "Is she going to be okay?"

"She'd be better if you first got off her."

Looking down, suddenly realizing where she was, Weiss quickly climbed off the girl underneath her. As she backpedaled, Weiss ran into Pyrrha's shins and almost knocked the taller woman over. _'Wow, you have no sense of personal space Pyrrha.' _

Breaking the silence again, looking up at Weiss and ignoring Pyrrha, Mercury quipped: "I don't know if us meeting was funnier, or if it was you meeting these two." Looking up for a second, smirking at Weiss, Mercury sneered: "They were both priceless in their own ways." Mercury then turned back down to Ruby, and while he kept smiling and chuckling while he worked, Weiss noticed that the smile didn't seem quite right. It wasn't quite genuine, his usual bravado seeming somewhat forced and awkward...

Suddenly Pyrrha spoke up, still sounding somewhat on edge. In all honesty, Weiss had momentarily forgotten both her and the still masked man standing off to their side. Glancing at him for a split second, Weiss would have sworn he had his gun put away a second ago. Now it was out again. At least the pistol was still pointed at the ground.

"I don't think you should be moving her head if she's got a _head _injury." Pyrrha's voice seemed to take on a harsh tone, and Weiss worried for a second that she'd have to break up a fight. Last thing Weiss wanted was a brawl to start on top of Ruby while the redhead was still passed out.

But before Weiss had to intervene, Mercury responded. "Sheesh, don't be so surly, it doesn't fit you well. I've got the magic fingers... the grass is always greener in my palms and what not..." But Mercury did pull his hands away from Ruby's neck, already their normal color again. Turning to Weiss, still chuckling to himself, he said: "She'll be fine."

Weiss breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank you Mercury. I was worried she would be hurt..."

"Yeah, you should have been. It's bad enough to get one concussion, but two in a ten minute period is definitely a recipe for a bad week." Ignoring the aghast looking on Weiss's face, shifting his gaze back down to Ruby again, Mercury stated: "I hadn't done anything, and she'd have probably had a few week long headache, and who knows what kind of brain damage would come after that." Catching the growing tint of worry that laced the blonde's icy blue eyes, he quickly added: "But she's fine!"

Weiss let her tension go, her heart already at ease. But the girl next to her seemed to think otherwise, and by the sound of rustling nylon and denim growing nearer, the man behind them seemed to agree with Pyrrha's apprehension. "I'm sorry," Pyrrha added haughtily, sounding anything but sorry, "but what makes you able to tell how she'll be! I heard her head hit, it didn't sound like something to just brush off!"

Mercury ignored the angry redhead, and looked back down at Ruby. He caught sight of the blood trail on the girl below him and her split chin. "Ouch, that looks like it hurt." Reaching out, his fingers relighting with their silver glow in the sunlight and the full view of everyone, Mercury rubbed the red strip with an index finger. Weiss flicked her eyes up to Pyrrha's face, seeing the champion's eyes widen in surprise.

Leaving behind a trail of fading metallic sparkles for a few seconds, Mercury watched as the rift in the skin on Ruby's chin flowed back together. Once he was sure his work was finished, Mercury's hand stopped glowing and he twisted his head back and forth while double checking his work. "Man, that left a nasty mark, even I couldn't cover that up."

"But she's fine?"

"Oh, she's fine alright. I mean... Red's got a few screws knocked loose, but that had nothing to do with me in the first place." Straightening out to his full height, Mercury smiled down at Weiss and quipped: "If it had been a few inches higher and not hidden under her chin, you two could have been scar buddies."

Mercury's joke was wasted in the tense air. "Thanks Mercury." Looking down at Ruby, Weiss's face twitched for a second, and then she added "I, well, when will she-"

"In about an hour." Rolling his shoulders, Mercury added: "Should be enough time for me to get our stuff. Fill them in while I'm gone." Mercury started walking, although he stopped for a second to look back at the person standing farthest away from the entire group. "And Lie Ren, take off the mask, you aren't fooling anybody."

And without another word, Mercury took off, making sure to hop over the string of orange that spanned across the street.

Pyrrha squinted after Mercury angrily. "He's... he's a character."

Weiss answered Pyrrha, while looking at the masked man walking up towards them. "Mercury comes off as an ass, but he's actually a good person."

The man walking forward cut in, interjecting into the conversation. "That's hard to believe, White Fang and all."

Lowering the mask, shaking his straight black hair out as he pulled the white disk down, Weiss saw that it really was her old classmate Ren. His face was still almost ageless, nearly identical to how it had been ten years ago, other than some stubble here and there on his cheekbones. Although he did lack the iconic purple lock of hair that used to run down the front of his face. "I mean, he was a scoundrel and spy for close to three years. He stole information, ferreted out secrets, betrayed us all ... should we really trust him?"

Looking off into the distance, surprised that Mercury was already out of sight, Weiss answered:"... I would, and that kind of faith doesn't come easy to me. We all were different ten years ago..."

"Hmm... I guess." Pyrrha looked down at Ruby, who was now cleaned up and simply asleep. "Can we move her a bit? Of the street, out of the sun."

"Hmm... Should be able to." Without waiting for the others to do anything, Weiss leaned down and picked Ruby up, hefting her up into her arms and into a bridal carry. Weiss was actually surprised when she picked up Ruby. She wasn't that heavy. "Come on, let's go and get out of the sun..."

As they walked off the street, Weiss couldn't tell if Ruby's head just fell into her neck, or if her face was nuzzling itself there consciously. It didn't really matter... it still brought a smile to Weiss's face either way...

* * *

Running faster than he had in a while, actually pushing himself for the first time in recent memory, Mercury flew through the forest. This was as fast as he could have gone earlier, although before he and Weiss set off for Ruby earlier, Mercury had decided to let the blonde set the pace. He hadn't realized how much stronger he was than the average person, until he actually compared himself to the blonde. _'I remember a time when she used to outrun me... and she had stumpy little legs back then too!'_

It had taken twenty minutes to go from their bags to the city with Weiss in tow. On his own, he made it back to their packs in a measly five, although he originally ran past the unmarked piece of forest where he had left them.

After a few minutes of backtracking and searching through random bushes, Mercury finally found the bags, tossed haphazardly into probably the thorniest bush within a few miles of here.

"Alright, here they are. Ah, AH, hell... of course I threw them into a rose bush, my luck."

Mercury swung his own pack over his shoulder easily, the motion routine after all this time. But he then weighed Weiss's bag on his outstretched arm for a second. _'Should I take it back? I mean, it won't take long for them to find it, especially if I leave this one out in the center of the road...'_

Weighing his options, Mercury threw a quick glance back at Beacon. "Fucking hell, I shouldn't stick around... Pyrrha didn't roll out the welcome mat for me, that's for sure."

Rocking back and forth on his heels, Mercury checked the time by the sun. He'd probably only been gone for ten or so minutes... he could have time to think.

* * *

"So... is it just you and Ruby, or is Mercury going back for... others?"

While Ren was being perfectly polite, Weiss knew what he was asking. "Yang died about five years ago... it's just us and Mercury now."

Ren's eyes flicked down to Ruby, who had been placed down in the shade of a side alley, under the awning of an old store and out of the rising sun's glare. The redhead was still out, although every once in a while she'd shift or make a small murmur. "I'm sorry to hear that."

"Happens..."

"I guess, but it shouldn't have..." Ren seemed to hesitate for a second, and then asked: "So... Um, why did you even come to Beacon?"

Weiss flinched for a second, hearing something in that she hoped she was just over-analyzing. "...Should we not have? Are we not welcome?"

"Of course you are!" Pyrrha's voice cut in, although the look on Ren's face made Weiss think he was about to say the same thing. "You'll always be welcome with us, you saved our lives. We would have died if you hadn't opened the flood gates... so to speak." After a moment of hesitation, she added: "I guess we can talk about Mercury later. But we're just curious... I mean, seven years is a long time to go AWOL and then suddenly show up out of the blue."

Weiss, already feeling relieved, shrugged her shoulders. "I mean, I guess we just got tired of wandering. We've been all over the continent, and every time we tried to settle down, the people we'd end up with would be worse than actual clickers..."

"Ah..."

Looking around for something to talk about, Weiss's eyes landed on the source of most of the morning's mysteries. Taking a few steps to the side, Weiss stood next to what everyone had been tripping on. Coming up to around midcalf on Weiss, it looked like several corded lines of fishing wire, all interwoven and tied together. Lifting up her foot and hooking it down on the cord, Weiss heard a satisfyingly low note pluck off the string, like the lowest cord of a harp being strummed. "What's this?"

"Oh, it's just a tripwire for infected. See that little hole in the wall that all the wires go into?"

On further inspection, Weiss saw what Pyrrha was referencing. A small hole, the diameter of Weiss's pinky finger, was bored into the brick wall of the shop, and the cord disappeared inside of the wall.

Without waiting for Weiss's response, Pyrrha added: "There's another one of those holes on the opposite side of the street. The cord then runs through the building to meet up with the rest of the trip wires, up to nine bells that lets us know when something's tripped the line, and which ones been tripped." Looking down at the cord, Pyrrha muttered: "Usually people see it and just step over, it's not meant to stop them... but eh, you and Ruby probably both had other things on your minds than to watch where you were going."

Looking at the cord, Weiss couldn't understand why they'd go through all the trouble for something so complex if they didn't seem to use it. "Why set all this up... and why not stop people?"

Pyrrha gave Weiss an odd look. "We aren't going to stop people. Why would we? They want to enter the city, they can go right ahead. We need the people, makes the place run smoother. There aren't many in the city, so we aren't going to be turning the people who do show up away."

Weiss raised an eyebrow, and then skeptically pointed at the rifle slung across Pyrrha's back. "That's a lot of firepower for just letting anybody pass..."

Ren spoke up at that point, his voice tinted with a smile that didn't make it to his bland face. "We aren't idiots, we see people who look like trouble, and we deal with them. But in doing this for... six years, we've only had to get in a fight twice." Checking his nails, as though the statement bored him, Ren added: "We've only killed eight people since we took this up while they were entering, and they were obviously looking to start trouble in the city. Everyone else, we let them pass, never even letting them know we were here in the first place."

"Oh... that's refreshing. Human decency..." Weiss looked down at the cord again, still unclear on something. "So then why set this up at all?"

"Easier. If you clean up the one or two shamblers when they show up, its way easier to handle than having to check around every corner for infected as you're walking through the city. Inner city is completely infected free, and almost no shamblers make it past that line."

"I get it..." With a smile, Weiss asked: "...Shamblers?"

Without responding, Pyrrha took a few steps forward, dragging her feet sideways and mimicking an infected perfectly.

"You'd be great at charades..." Weiss suddenly flinched for a second, as Ruby gave another loud murmur, although they still came out completely unintelligible. After Ruby went silent, not giving Weiss anything she could work with, the blonde remembered some of her partner's concerns. "What's the city like?"

"It's a... It's..." Ren seemed to have a bit of trouble putting it into words. "Have you been to many cities since the fall?"

"A few. What's this one like?"

Scratching his head for a second, Ren began naming cities. "Uhhh... Mistral's the only other big city besides Beacon that held itself together." At the blank look on Weiss's face, Ren changed tactics. "Okay, smaller cities then... I've heard about Vizal, Sestrai, Ovelyk, Caric, Marlz-"

"We went to Vizal but didn't enter..." Weiss fell off awkwardly, not wanting to explain Ruby and Yang right now. "We were actually staying in Caric for the winter, until we left a few weeks before the season ended."

"Okay, good, Caric is pretty much identical to how the city's running now." Ren walked over to the shattered window, covered in dust and ash, and started drawing circles within circles in the dust motes. "Okay, the inner city is basically just downtown and all of the apartments, docks, and shipping yards. So, most of Beacon. This is where about ninetyish percent of the people in the city live." He then drew a larger circle around the first. "This is the part that Beacon tries to keep infected clean, just to make things easier for the city inside."

"Are thing's going that well that you can afford to risk people to keep the area around the city clear?" Weiss had a hard time believing what she was hearing. It sounded too good to be true.

"Risk? Nope, we're just told to do this. City's not that great, it's kind of under marshal law. It's worse than not great... really dangerous place." Ren shot a look off towards a circling flock of black specks in the sky. Weiss remember those clouds of pest birds, how they hovered over to the city and coated the sails of every ship in the harbor with black feathers. "They stay in there and leave us alone... we do our jobs... everybody's happy..."

"Where's out here? So you guys are just waste landers or something?" Weiss felt stupid, having to ask so many questions. "And what's your 'job'."

Pyrrha suddenly cut into the conversation with a quick laugh. "You haven't changed... you still ask nonstop questions, top of the class know-it-all," Pyrrha hummed, smiling slyly at the scoff she got out of Weiss. "Hah, don't worry about it, I'm just poking fun. Gets boring when you've got only the same few people to talk to every day. We live in the outside circle of... Ren's horrible diagram."

"You want to draw it then!"

Pyrrha just laughed: "Nope, I don't get to critique if I do it." Looking back at Weiss, the taller woman said: "Nobody wanted it, so we actually got all of Beacon's campus." At an incredulous look from Weiss, she added: "I know it may sound like too much to protect at first, but really, it's safe. The walls are too high for infected to get over, and there's only one main entrance now, we chained up all the other gates."

Ren suddenly piped up, answering Weiss's other question. "We keep clickers and other things away, and in exchange... Caric gave out rations right?" At the nod from Weiss, Ren nodded back. "Same here. Guys in charge give out ration cards for doing whatever they assign you. You go into the city once a week to pick up what you can trade your cards for, and you take whatever they give you back."

"Most of the people in charge were council members. They knew we were hunters, so as long as we don't go causing trouble in the city, they let us just run wild out here. We keep this side in order, and everything's good, they cough up the tickets."

"Sound's... bittersweet I guess." Weiss couldn't help feeling let down. So, they trek all this way, and find out that Beacon just fell apart like everywhere else. She hadn't known what she'd been expecting, but it hadn't been this. A dangerous city, and a couple of old friend shaking their head's saying 'don't go there'. _'I know it was illogical, but I thought... if one place made it, it'd be Beacon. I guess I just kind of hoped..."_

"It's not that bad, really." Pyrrha's voice caught Weiss off guard, it sounded concerned. It sounded as though she was worried about Weiss's opinion. "I mean, you wouldn't want to go into the city anyway..."

The way Pyrrha dropped that last line, just leaving it in the air waiting for Weiss's response, made her finally realize what was up. Weiss realized what they'd been leading up to. "So if I shouldn't go into the city, then..."

"You could come with us," Ren finished for her smoothly.

There was a couple seconds of silence, where everyone waited for someone else to speak. Pyrrha seemed to chew on her tongue before saying: "So, do you want to? Come with us, I mean?" Her eyes flicked down to the still sleeping girl lying on the sidewalk, and she suddenly stuttered: "I mean, you can wait, there's absolutely no rush. Talk with Ruby and all, you should do that first before we suddenly start asking-"

"You guys are idiots," Weiss cut in. Smirking as she watched their stunned faces, Weiss then added sarcastically: "Yeah, I just ran into two of my oldest friends, just got the chance to reunite with them, and got the feeling they're somehow still decent people through all this mess. Whelp, see you guys around, I'm sure we'll bump into each other every once in a while... Of course we'll all come with you guys. We'd be fools not to. I don't have to ask Ruby, I'm sure she won't have a different opinion."

Ren finally cracked a smile, and Pyrrha just sighed in aggravation at Weiss's remark. "What's with you two?! I'm formal with you, and you start cracking jokes and ripping on us. I give Ruby a hug, and it's like she's about to bite my head off! Why"

"Hmmm... yeah, I guess time changes people." Weiss suddenly realized she'd missed an important question, something she should have asked about a minute into the introductions. "So... Who else has changed?"

* * *

"AHHHH, FUCK THIS! WHY IS THIS SO HARD TO CHOOSE!?"

Fifty minutes passed, and Mercury was no closer to deciding. He'd gone back and forth, ended up walking towards Beacon again, and throwing Weiss's pack down in a heap and walking away. He usually only went ten feet in either direction before he stopped and came back to his center point, right under the first break in the canopy, and began the cycle again.

Thinking away from himself for a moment, trying to get some abstraction from the issue, Mercury found the hole in the tree line above him. Looking off in the distance, already feeling his own worries slip away, the flashes of deja vu he was getting was the oddest feeling. He could see Beacon academy's tower on the horizon, even more like a black pillar against the sky now with the rising sun. He'd talked with other hunters before in the past, back when he was still undercover and all buddy-buddy with everybody else, and how they felt pride and joy at the sight of their own monument in the world. They thought it was some grand treasure to cherish, and felt pride at saying they'd been a part of that

Mercury had never gotten the feeling. To him that giant, over glorified spike sticking out of the ground like it was Remnant's own personal splinter, used to fill him with so much dread that he'd feel like vomiting. Every day he'd have to bottle up and force down his growing fear, that he was getting closer and closer to being found out. His bravado and arrogance finally unmasked as the marks of a spy. He knew he'd inevitably get captured, and probably be tortured for information by Ironwood personally.

_'Their wings would have wilted, their halos would have disappeared, and their smiles would have rotted the second they found out about me if I hadn't ran first. We all never even thought of doing things like that, but no! Does it matter that we never stooped to their level? Of course not! Apparently they're the good guys, they're allowed to get away with torture! Nobody ever talks about that side of the hunter's huh, just the goody two shoes who got to keep a blind eye to everything else!' _Mercury's thought's burst out of his lips, his sudden burst of anger making him forget where he was. "NOBODY EVER REMEMBERS YOU WERE WORSE THAN WE-," Mercury suddenly stuttered off, realizing what he was doing. "...And I'm yelling at a tower of rocks. Greaaaaaaaat..."

That spire didn't fill him with hope. It just reminded him of his fear. Luckily that fear was long gone... With the end of everything, at least that had ended too. Maybe anger had replaced it, but at least Mercury could deal with anger. He didn't have an outlet for that anymore, although every time he did it seemed to go too far, like with that stalker only a few weeks ago when it had been just himself and Ruby trudging along.

_'Enough living in the past, I've still got problems to deal with now...'' _ And Mercury was right. He still had to deal with the problem facing him. And holding onto Weiss's bag in his left hand, shaking it up and down, Mercury knew he had to come up with a final decision.

"Gah! You know what, Weiss'll find her stuff eventually, it's not like she had anything really..." Just to confirm, Mercury quickly opened Weiss's white backpack, which had turned grey with wear and tear, and felt around inside. "Are you kidding me?! She's... she's got nothing!"

Mercury felt around a bit more, feeling his hand brush against something hard and metallic. Pulling it out, he found himself holding Ruby's lighter. "Okay, she's got a lighter... big deal! It's a piece of scrap metal, it doesn't even light anymore, it's a paper weight!"

But turning it over in his hands, Mercury felt a pull towards the city. "But I... I should return this." He got another two feet, and stopped. "But they'll shoot me! I don't want to get shot, and that's saying I live pieces of metal getting flung at me at a thousand miles an hour!"

Dropping the lighter back into Weiss's bag, Mercury himself dropped to the floor. "I really don't want to go back...," Mercury groaned out to the air. "I know things'll go sour eventually. They may decide to shoot me now as I'm walking back, or a month from now when Ruby and Weiss have their backs turned... And that's if Ruby doesn't strangle me herself when she wakes up..."

Suddenly, Mercury's inner voice roared into life. _'What is wrong with you?! How in the name of hell can you even think of letting that no good priss run you off? We beat her in the past, we can crush her again! You're seriously going to let her just sweep you away from Red and Weiss like you're some no good piece of lint, back to wandering across mountain ranges on your own! You just going to let her take away your friends like as if you don't have a right to them too?! FUCKING MAN UP!'_

Mercury had to smirk at that thought. "I guess I'm right, like always..." Pushing himself off the ground, ignoring the hard roots that dug into his palm as he pressed into the earth, Mercury rose to his feet and swung Weiss's bag over his shoulder on top of his own pack. Turning towards Beacon, finally feeling some sense of finality in his decision, he started walking along the rough pavement trail for the third time today, muttering to himself as he went.

"Maybe I'll leave... maybe I won't. But if I'm leaving, it'll be on my own terms, not just because some snobby bitch gives me the cold shoulder..."

* * *

Walking up slowly, Ruby's first thought was slight discomfort. As she came too, hearing several voices that sounded as though they were bickering, Ruby felt as though her head was a balloon filling with water. The more she woke up, the more stretched she felt. And when someone noticed her shift and grimace at the noise, the question that followed made her feel like she was about to pop.

"Ruby, are you awake?"

_'Ahhhh... no need to shout... my head feels like somebody kicked me in the eyes."_

Her eyes cracking open, Ruby found herself lying against the cool ground in the shade, looking up at the bottom of a rotten, faded wood slatted awning. Although, she had to squint in even this dim glow, the light feeling like flaming hot pins being jabbed into her eyes. Sitting up, feeling somebody back away from her as she did so, Ruby pressed the heels of her palms into both of her eyes, trying to deal with the pressure in her head. "Yeah, yeah, I'm up..."

Ruby identified Weiss's voice easy enough, although there were more than a few voices muttering in the background. "Are you okay though? You look like you're in pain..."

Unable to help herself, Ruby snapped back sarcasticly: "Oh noooooo, I just enjoy ramming my fists into my face for fun is all, great way to wake up..." Ruby kicked herself the second the phrase left her mouth, she heard everyone around go silent at her snippy reply. Pulling her hands away from her eyes, Ruby felt them begin to water in the dim light. Squinting up at Weiss, whose face looked more concerned than offended, Ruby mumbled: "... Sorry, my head's killing me is all. It feels like I fell down a flight of stairs."

"Oh, I...," Weiss trailed off, looking satisfied in Ruby's response. Turning back, Ruby saw Weiss glare at Mercury, who was standing back with Pyrrha and... Ren?

_'Why not Jaune?'_

Suddenly whirling around, raising her voice to the point where Ruby winced at the noise, Weiss shouted: "Mercury, I thought you said she'd be fine?"

Smiling sheepishly, Mercury shrugged. "I may have exaggerated _how_ fine she'd be. Nobody's going to just walk of getting skull fractures and concussions, even with healing... I mean, at least she isn't asking what her name is."

Weiss's eyes widened, and she slowly turned back to Ruby. "Uh... do, do you...?"

Standing up, ignoring the senses of both vertigo and nausea that hit her as she got off the ground, Ruby growled: "Weiss, I'm not playing twenty questions while my head feels like a spinning top." While she snapped that, trying to sound strong, everyone in the group could see Ruby's legs shaking. The redhead swayed back and forth on her feet to the point where she had to reach out and put a hand on the nearby wall to keep herself from falling over.

"Good enough for me!" Slapping his palms together, already starting to walk off, Mercury started off down the street. "Just keep her away from me, last thing I want is her hurling on my shoes..."

Weiss watched him walk off as though he was insane. "What the hell are you doing? Let's give her a minute, she's barely stand-"

"Let's go." Ruby saw Weiss shoot her a look, and she smiled back. "I'm feeling better, I'd rather move and shake out my legs. Clear my thoughts." Casting a glance over her shoulder, to Pyrrha and Ren, Ruby asked: "I'm guessing you were probably showing us somewhere... or are we just heading on alone without you two?"

Pyrrha hesitated in place for a second, but Lie Ren just nodded. Walking ahead first, he stayed in the shadows of the buildings. To be nice to the still woozy redhead. Pyrrha fell in behind him, and Ruby and Weiss after her. After they all passed him, Mercury smirked and then turned and followed, whistling as he went.

* * *

Ruby's headache hadn't gotten better as she walked along, and her head was still killing her as she darted between each bit of shade with her head bowed. But she was getting pretty good at hiding it. She'd just kept her mouth shut and her face down, concentrating hard on not vomiting. Luckily she hadn't needed to bite her tongue yet, Weiss'd probably make everybody stop and wait around for no god damn reason if Ruby showed any signs of weariness again. _'Not like it helps, just kills time... if anything, the sooner we get there, the better. After introductions, I can lock myself in a dark room, keep my head down, and let the headache fade away...'_

She'd paid attention to the conversation long enough to key in on where they were going. Once Ruby had heard where they were heading, to the academy of all places, Ruby felt totally content in just tuning out their yammering and bickering. She could barely believe that there of all places was where Pyrrha and Ren had decided to set up shop. Too dangerous... too open and obvious.

_'They've been here for six years though apparently... I'll hold onto my opinion until then. If anything, I want Weiss near somebody to protect her as long as I feel like hurling.'_

Maybe it was rude to just key out of the conversation, but Ruby didn't care. Really, it sounded pointless, from the tiny snippets she was catching. From what Ruby heard, it seemed like Pyrrha was snapping at Mercury every few moments about whatever she could. Ruby could feel the malice just oozing off the champion, even while she was half out of it and not Pyrrha's target. Every time she'd rant at Mercury, he'd usually return in kind, although his tone did sound more sarcastic than actually biting to Ruby. That probably made all their bickering more heated, instigated a fight more than just a simple snide comment.

_'Speaking of Mercury...'_ Ruby thought, raising her eyes off the ground for a moment to look for him. And as she did, Ruby realized she must have checked out for longer than she had thought.

Standing tall in the sky, absolutely massive with how close to it they were, was Beacon academy's clock tower. The hands were stuck at three and eleven, telling Ruby the tumblers inside must have broken long ago.

Ruby tried to find everyone, figure out where they were. In front was Pyrrha and Ren, both their backs to Ruby as they led the way forward. They were almost to Beacon's main gate, the thin metal bars making up the door were rusted and warped with the years of neglect. Walking next to Ruby, so close that their sleeves were brushing against each other's, was Weiss. And since Mercury was nowhere to be seen, yet still just as loud, Ruby knew he had to still be following behind the rest of the group.

Slowing down, beginning to meander and let everyone else pass her by, Ruby stopped to walk next to the one person in the group who seemed to be lagging behind. Grabbing Mercury by the arm, Ruby spoke out forward to the rest of the group. "You guys go ahead, I've got to chat with Mercury for a second."

The responses she received were mixed. Pyrrha raised an eyebrow at the two, obviously curious, before she turned away to give Ruby her privacy. Ren seemed as though he couldn't care less, taking a second to look at the pair before he shrugged his shoulders and kept walking on, pushing the grand entrance's swinging gate open and passing through.

The face that seemed the most anxious was Weiss's though, and Ruby could almost hear the blonde's thoughts in the air.

_'Why are we already starting this again? Can't we all just be honest with everyone?'_

Ruby tried to get Weiss to relax, giving her an honest and genuine smile past her headache. "Please? Just thirty feet up, and I promise it'll only take a second..."

Weiss seemed to linger for a few seconds, continuing to stare at Ruby anxiously as she began to slowly walk away. Ruby smiled at her the entire way, up until Weiss followed behind Ren and Pyrrha, passing through the iron wrought replica vines that separated Beacon's street's and the academy. The second Weiss wasn't watching Ruby and was out of earshot, Ruby's smile disappeared, and angrily she whirled on Mercury.

"They hell are you playing at Mercury?!"

Mercury stopped his humming for a second, although his usual snark was somewhat lacking in his answer. "I couldn't begin to guess what you're getting at... care to enlighten me?"

"Why the hell did you even let Weiss get that close to me?!"

"I don't-"

"Don't you dare try lying to me!" Ruby had to reign in her anger, which was getting ready to boil over into pure rage. She'd been trying to sit on it the best she could until Weiss was out of the way. Her head's constant throbbing wasn't helping. "I know you saw me leave the camp this morning, you knew I had left! Why the hell did you even tell Weiss!?"

"I didn't-"

Grabbing Mercury by the shoulder's, feeling woozy as she got another hit of vertigo, Ruby snapped a response at the silver haired man. One he couldn't brushoff. "We made eye contact when I left! You gave me this unapproving, know it all look, but didn't move to stop me! Why the hell did you wait just long enough to put Weiss in danger for?!"

Mercury sneered, obviously knowing he was cornered. "...I waited long enough for you to get away, and get into the city. Believe me, if I had wanted to let Weiss catch up to you, we would have caught you on the trail ten minutes after we left our campsite."

"You seriously think-"

"You weren't wrong by the way." When Ruby stopped for a second, listening to what he had to say, Mercury continued. "You going in by yourself was best. Your predictable Red, I knew you'd try sneaking off. So... I let you. Weiss would be close enough to help you if things went wrong, and I'd be there to patch things up, like I did today." Starting to walk past Ruby, brushing off the redhead who looked livid, Mercury finished with: "It was best. Now let's go and meet the wolves."

Ruby stared after Mercury as he walked off, trying to know if she should be angry, glad, upset, or some weird mixture of all three. He'd been that calculating, and she hadn't even noticed. Shaking her head and walking after him, Ruby couldn't help but wonder what else he'd been callous about.

* * *

_'I worry about you Ruby. You... you scare me. We could have waited, there's no rush... god, half the time it's like you already know what I'm thinking, why can't you know all this?'_

"Weiss..." Ruby grumbled while walking next to the blonde, breaking her train of thought. "I can almost hear you stewing on your thoughts..."

Looking up at Ruby, seeing the layer of shiny sweat on her skin, Weiss asked: "Ruby, you're green... are you sure you're okay?"

Walking along, Ruby just continued to squint her eyes and look ahead. "I'm fine, don't worry about it. I don't care where we're going, but the second we get there I'm locking myself in the dark and quiet."

"You do know that your headache wouldn't be as painful if you'd just waited a few minutes, instead of just rushing off the second you woke up..." Sighing loudly, not caring now that Ruby winced at the loud noise, Weiss commented: "I'd like it if you'd listen to me every now and then..."

Ruby snorted at the statement, and she commented dryly: "I'll think on it..."

She scoffed back. Weiss wasn't angry at Ruby, but she couldn't say she was pleased either. _'Right now, you should be glad that I don't-'_

"Weiiiiiiiiss!"

"Fine!" Looking around, Weiss couldn't help but get flashbacks from everything around her. It was their old campus, and even after all this time it really looked like old Beacon academy. The ivy was out of control, and the greenery from the grass medians was almost knee high, but other than that it all looked the same. Off to her left was the old cafeteria, minus a few windows. And towards her right was the lecture and sparing hall. _'Ah, those were fun days... showing off like idiots for fun... just goofing off and beating the shit out of each other for no other reason than to get a break from studying...'_

And directly in front of her were the old student dorms. It was probably in the best condition out of all the buildings, most of the window open and clear. Weiss's eyes roved the side of the building, and she could actually see inside her old dorm room. _'I don't think Ozpin ever filled our room when we left... I wonder how much of our old stuff is still there.'_

As they walked towards the building, Weiss heard arguing voices echo out of the inside. After talking to both Ren and Pyrrha, the blonde had expected seeing them. But, it was still odd hearing them. It was strange, the feeling of finding out those who, in your mind, had been dead for a long time and that you were wrong. Weiss kept on half expecting Pyrrha and Ren to turn to wisps of smoke and vanish. She could hardly believe in even two more survivors.

Echoing out of the entrance, just behind a door that had been left slightly ajar, the two voices continued to bicker.

"...I swear to god, you keep cheating and I'm not playing this with you anymore!"

"I'm not cheating! I'm beating you fair and square, you're just being a sore loser!"

"You didn't think I'd notice when your queen just suddenly reappeared on top of your rook three turns after I take it! You can't just take pieces that I took out and slip them back on the board when I'm not looking!"

"Okay, I can see how you may see that at as cheating. But look, it's boring to pla-"

"It's the way you're supposed to play the game!"

"I just thought it'd-"

"Speaking of your queen, what the hell is that?! You can't just stack pieces, this isn't checkers!"

"But I'm queen of-"

"Oh my god, that joke is so old! I'm sick of it, find a new one!"

"YOU KNOW WHAT, YOU'RE RIGHT! I DON'T WANT TO PLAY THIS ANYMORE!"

"DO NOT FLIP THE- NORA!"

Just then Ren pushed hard on the front door, sending it swinging into the room, then entire group got a good look in on the scene inside the main hall. A shaggy haired blonde man had fallen backwards and was lying on the floor, and a shorter woman than anyone else in the room with vivid orange hair stood over him, her hands thrown into the air, still holding onto a black queen. And raining down on both of them, dozens of black and gold stones pelted the two as chess pieces fell out of the air and back down to the ground.

With the sudden light that entered the dimly lit room, both of the two were blinded by the change in brightness. Ren and Pyrrha stepped in, the taller redhead shaking her face at the two in annoyance, although from here Weiss could see the hints of a smile on the side of Pyrrha's face. The other three stepped in behind them, although in the somewhat cramped hall entrance, they still stayed standing side by side in the full glare of the sunlight.

Weiss heard Jaune snap at Ren and Pyrrha from the floor, his voice making it obvious that he hadn't seen the other three figures still standing behind the other two in the sun. "AHHH! Fucking shut the door, it's bright as hell outside!" Jaune shielded is eyes with the back of his palm, and looked out at the figures standing in front of the blindingly bright light.

Ren simply sighed a response. "So, I take it you weren't going to get to doing inventory as soon as we left like you promised."

"Well, we had some time to goof around, you two weren't supposed to be back before nightfall." Glancing up, still squinting at the bright light, Weiss heard Jaune ask: "Why are you two back so soon? Something happen?"

Weiss had expected some introduction, and by the way Ruby straightened out, she guessed the redhead expected the same. But instead, Ren just reached over and grabbed the heavy edge of the heavy wooden door, swinging it shut behind him. As the harsh light disappeared, and the room returned to the gloom that had probably been present before they had entered, Nora and Jaune could finally see again.

If Weiss had said she didn't find the sight in front of her somewhat funny, Weiss would have been giving a bold faced lie. Jaune's jaw almost hit the floor when he saw the floor when he saw his new guests. That, and his eyes almost bulged out of their sockets.

And Nora... she was so speechless that Weiss saw the queen fall out of her hand and drop onto her bare foot, landing pointed top first. It probably had hurt, but she seemed so stunned that she didn't even notice. All she did was utter a single sentence as Weiss flashed a smile, feeling somewhat awkward just standing there in the grand foyer's entrance.

"... y-you're back... I guess we should probably move the armory out of your old room then."

* * *

**_Nothing to say really, I hope you all liked the first story of the new year. Know that there are plenty more to come, sooner rather than later. Comment what you think about the chapter, I love hearing feedback and good criticism. And remember to follow the story if you're interested in what happens next._**

**_Thanks for reading!_**


	15. Thirteen O'Clock

**3 Weeks Later**

"Ahhhhh, I love this," Nora hummed, leaning back in her chair and struggling to balance her shotgun across the bridge of her nose. Unintentionally, Nora's game left the cold, cruel barrel of metal on the business end of the gun pointed at Ruby's face. While the ginger tried to keep it there by bobbing her head back and forth with her firearms swaying, Nora hummed: "I get to mess with you, Weiss and Mercury now too."

Knocking the shotgun away, Ruby grumbled at Nora. "First off, don't point that thing at me, it's gonna fire one day and blow my face off."

"Nah, safety's on," Nora sighed, beginning to rebalance her rifle. But at the look on Ruby's face, which was almost begging Nora to do put her gun back up and start a fight, the shorter woman decided to not give Ruby the ammunition. Instead, she held it across her knees with both hands. "Uh... so, you think Vacuo might have somehow pulled through all this?"

And that was how most of the day's conversations went. Nora being optimistic and imagining countries and cities totally evading all this mess, and Ruby shooting her far fetched hopes down. Every time she did get her hopes shut down, the ginger haired girl would sulk for a minute, then fire off on some new tangent

Despite being stuck in a dingy old sitting room filled with dusty furniture, only modified with just a row of hanging bells on the opposite wall, it was actually fun just sitting and talking. Although Nora was constantly trying Ruby's patience.

"And second..." Ruby hummed, picking up the earlier thread in the conversation, "I'm actually surprised you included Mercury in that tally."

"Pff... I could care less what he used to be like. Once he stops sulking, I'll gladly share a drink with him and laugh about the good-ol days at the academy..." Nora smiled to herself, and then added: "And all the times I beat his ass into the floor while we were sparing."

"Hmph... wait, share a drink? I thought Jaune said that booze was only used for cleaning wounds, and for the odd celebration?"

Giving Ruby a mischievous look, Nora simply stated: "Jaune can make all the rules he wants, but it doesn't change the fact that I can also have my own personal stash. Where'd you think I broke out the tequila from on the night you guys arrived?"

"Ah... I think...," Ruby paused, "that you should probably not tell me where that stash is."

"I thought you hated alcohol?" Nora smiled, and then chuckled at a memory. "I mean, drunk Ruby's a blast, but I don't think I ever saw her more than once or twice..."

Rolling her eyes, Ruby looked Nora up and down as she did so. And as she watched, Ruby couldn't help but think that what she saw was amazing. Ruby had thought that Mercury looked young. Now Ruby realized that it was just her who looked older. All of them, every single freaking one, it was as if they'd been frozen in time, not really living until Ruby and Weiss had stumbled upon the team.

This was especially true with Nora. The snarky voice coming from the orange haired girl didn't match her looks. She sounded shrewd and witty, although still as scatterbrained as she had in the past. But while her voice had aged, Nora still looked young. She looked youthful, full of energy, already dressed for the summer in an open beige cardigan and pink undershirt. That, plus jeans and a pair of sneakers, made her look as if she'd maybe just turned twenty two and was getting ready to go walk Beacon's main shopping streets. Not a survivor in her late twenties, always on lookout for infected. If she and Weiss didn't share a birthday, Ruby would never believe that the empty-headed woman would be thirty in under a week.

"And drunk Ruby of all people," Ruby sighed while shaking her head, "should definitely stay far far away. Where I can keep her from embarrassing me more than I already have on my own."

"Oh ho ho! _Now_ you have me interested..." After a couple seconds of prodding though, Nora saw she was getting nowhere she wanted with Ruby. "Whatever, be no fun... I still get drunk Ren whenever I want." Going back to playing with her shotgun, spinning the locked trigger now on a finger, Nora twirled her gun as though it was a baton, not a fully automatic death machine. "I let him think he can still out drink me, then pound maybe three or four more shots before he and I go-"

"STOP!" Ruby glowered at the smirking Nora, and growled: "I have a good enough imagination, I don't need you giving me more mental images."

"I only wished it lasted lon-"

"NORA!"

Bursting out into laughter at Ruby's tone, Nora had to wipe away tears from her eyes. "Ah, this is great, I can't mess with the others like this anymore. They're a bunch of dopey no-funs, I can't do anything to surprise them anymore... I can't even embarrass Ren nowadays in front of everybody else. What has this world come to?"

"Hmph, you want to be around Ren so much, why don't you do these watches with him instead of with me?"

"WHAAAT, you think I'd want my super sexy boy-toy before you?!" Roping an arm around Ruby, ignoring the redhead's hiss as she did, Nora twisted her ring and pointer fingers together and said: "We're way tighter than he and I could ever be! Once we've been having sex behind his and Weiss's backs for a few years, it'll be sealed deal."

"Ughhhh... I'm not coming out here with you again after this."

Smirking, Nora let go of Ruby. "Relax, take a chill pill. I'm just messing with you... Also, I'm not allowed to bring Ren out here on these watches at the moment."

That piqued Ruby's interest. "And why so?"

"No couples!" After Nora sang out that answer, she elaborated. "Ya see, good old Jaunny boy somehow caught wind that Ren and I's performance on the watches would be 'lacking' when we came out together." At Ruby's questioning look, Nora smirked and added: "We'd get sidetracked during the day. A lot of waiting around, just me and Ren, nothing else to do..."

Ruby blushed when she finally caught on the Nora's meaning, picking up her hands and rubbing them off on her jeans, trying to think of anything that had felt sticky or slick on the few occasions she'd been out here.

"Don't worry, we clean up well... anyway, I feel as though the whole situation is somewhat unfair, I've never bugged him about the Shamblers that passed through when he and Pyrrha were out here. Although they're boring, and when they let infected by, it's just because their plain old unobservant..." Nora sighed sadly, shrugging her shoulders. "But I don't fight him, it's easier to just let him have his way and let him get all wishy-washy on his own. Jaune makes that rule every few weeks, then gets bored having to sit around with just Ren silently, or me being annoying and pestering him for a few hours, and takes his stupid rule back without any prodding on my part."

"Okay, first off, that is _sooooo_ gross. Is there even a safe piece of furniture in here, or have you two already ruined it all?" After the seconds of silence from Nora, Ruby sighed and then added: "And also...seriously?" Ruby tried thinking of straight laced Ren pulling stupid stunts like what Nora had described. "I... I can't see it. I mean, I never really imagined the Lie Ren just throwing caution to the wind and doing something so immature. Never met a bigger stickler for rules in my life..."

Swatting at Ruby, Nora huffed: "Hey, that's my man you're talking about!" Nora faked looking angry for a few seconds, although the scowl she tried to make looked sketchy the second it came up. After a moment, it slid from her face and the ginger sighed: "...yeah, you're right though. But hey, I like to think of Ren as putty in my capable hands."

"Of course you do."

"Anyhow, since we are on the subject of couples anyway... and you already know we're all gossiping about it behind your back... I've been dying to ask you something. The big scandal, the juicy little tidbit... what's up with you and Weiss?"

Ruby sighed. She'd been expecting this ever since she'd walked out here with Nora this morning. It had been about a week since everyone else at the Beacon base had found out that Ruby and Weiss weren't together anymore.

Or, that the two really didn't know where they stood anymore. In truth, the two felt closer than they had in years. Ruby felt more human, and Weiss seemed much happier. At least, Ruby wasn't finding any notes from Weiss about how terrible of a person she was.

They joked and laughed together now, although it still felt a bit awkward awkward from time to time. But even that was fading, and Ruby would have been lying if she'd said that everyone else's involvement hadn't helped. If it had still been just her and Weiss wandering the wilderness... well, who knows where their arguing would have left them at?

_'If I hadn't gotten better, maybe Weiss would have finally gotten sick of me? She's way less drawn in now... I've seen her smile more in the past few weeks than I did all last year...' _

Really, Ruby truly did thank everyone around her for all they'd done, who'd helped the pair through this five year straight rough patch. Even if she'd never actually said thanks out loud.

Both Pyrrha and Jaune had obviously been curious, but they'd also respected Ruby enough that when she said she didn't want to talk about it. When the redhead had said that, the conversation simply ended. Ruby was pretty sure that Ren felt the same way, although he was so stone faced that she couldn't really be sure if it was that, or if he hadn't really cared enough to ask in the first place.

But Nora didn't have a sense of boundaries... every time Ruby or Weiss was alone with her, they'd have to dodge dozens of questions, many of which were tactlessly asked or obviously crossed lines anyone would have already known were there.

"Nothing is up... at least, not anymore."

Nora hummed for a second, raising an eyebrow at Ruby and looking the redhead's defensive posture up and down, before saying: "Sorry, don't believe you."

"Believe what you want then," Ruby snapped. "It doesn't make the slightest difference to me."

Raising her hands, trying to placate Ruby, Nora mumbled: "Alright alright, be no fun..." Nora put down the rifle, and Ruby was surprised when she suddenly felt the room's atmosphere get dimmer. It was as if Nora was a constantly glowing lamplight, and when she got serious, her bright aura around her would fade.

"Actually, I do believe you. I'd been wondering why you two seemed so at odds since maybe two days after you guys showed up. When Weiss told Pyrrha that you two weren't a thing anymore... well, it made sense. You two in that old world fit nicely... now, fighting the hordes of dead and the monsters who make you wonder if people are really even human anymore... well, I don't think the girls from ten or so years ago would have been able to make that last..."

Ruby didn't say anything at first, just listened to Nora's monologue. It sounded sensible, and somewhat sad too. Neither of the two things something she'd expect from Nora. "I mean, when you say it like that-"

"I think it's sad," Nora said, cutting Ruby off. "So, you two seem to be sticking two the story that you aren't together anymore... but do either of you really want that to be true?"

"I'm not following you..."

"Sure, you guys have had your troubles. Both Jaune and I had problems with our partners becoming all stone faced and mopey, but we got through them. And we're now okay, we're living happily. It was probably harder for you and Weiss, it being just you two, no couples counselling while you were wandering around the wilds in the apocalypse..."

Nora obviously lost her train of thought at that point, her eyes going blank for a second. "I'm sorry, but what was I getting at?"

Ruby tried to shut the conversation down at that point, get to move on to something more benign. "Don't really remember, lets focus on the watc-"

"Oh yeah, you and Weiss! So, you and Weiss aren't together anymore... _apparently_. But to me, it looks like you both want to be. It's clear as day you both are head over heels for each other. You're both just too chicken to take the gambol and ask the other one out."

"Excuse me? Did you just say that I'm a coward?" Ruby couldn't get mad at Nora, she'd become good friends with the girl in this short time. But she could still be severely annoyed. "After all this time fighting infected and bandits, I think I've proven I'm hardened and tough enough to deal with my own problems."

"Pfft, all that means nothing. Killing's easy. It's dealing with people without bashing their skulls in that's hard." Leaning in, Nora actually got a sad look on her face, a real, genuine frown that reached up and shined through Nora's teal eyes. "I'm saying that you're afraid Weiss'll reject you if you ask. You are afraid, and I don't see the reason for it really, of knowing if Weiss actually wants you or not."

"I-I, you're..." Ruby trailed off, realizing there was some truth in the girl's words. "... I guess you're right then."

"Thought so. Anyway... how about you two start off fresh."

"Huh?!"

Nora scratched her head, for the first time in this conversation actually putting thought into what she was going to say. "You guys at least seem like friends, we can work with that... So, I mean, have you ever thought about asking Weiss out on another date again?"

"Uh, Nora... we almost got _married. _I mean, tied the knot and all that. I think asking her out on a date is a little silly..."

Making a loud snort, Nora replied: "Well sweetie, I'm sorry to break the truth to you, but your love life's options are kind of limited when you're in an apocalypse. Besides, you two always made a nice couple... I shipped it way before you guys went public."

"Yeah, because me and Weiss dating will go fantastic! I know, I can ask Weiss to go to popcorn and that crappy new romance that came out last week!" Ruby couldn't help the sarcasm that started leaking into her voice. "And after that, we can go ice skating, get a nice Italian dinner, go dancing in the park under the fireworks! Let's just see how all that goes!"

"Just because it won't be easy, doesn't mean you shouldn't try..."

"_It won't be easy?! _Nora, I don't see how it could be possible! Where the hell would I even start!? How the hell could I even ask!?"

Nora put her hands up, trying to placate Ruby. "Look, all I'm saying is you don't need to start off right where you two left off. I'm assuming you two weren't madly in love day one, it probably took time." Nora leaned in, her eyes almost pleading. "Just let it take time again... it'll probably be faster this time around."

The tension in the room faded, and Ruby was getting reminded over and over again why she'd liked Nora so much while they were still in school. Sometimes she wasn't all there when you talked to her. But when you finally got her attention, whatever she had to say would be well worth your time. After everything else, at least that hadn't changed...

Ruby slumped down in her chair, really thinking about all Nora had to say. "I just... I don't even know where I would start..."

"Oh my god, I've been telling you for the past five minutes!" Snorting, Nora huffed: "You are soooo dense... just fucking ask her out!"

Sighing loudly, Ruby pinched the bridge of her nose. "It isn't going to be that easy Nora... we've got a lot of history still, most of it bad... it's not like ten years ago when I could just walking up and ask the prissy heiress on a date to the mall..."

"Course it is!" Nora turned in her chair so that she was directly facing Ruby. "You keep on saying that you've been 'mean' and 'terrible' and 'unfair' to her... but the way I see it, Weiss is totally over all that. Have you ever even seen the way she looks at you nowadays?"

Snorting loudly, Ruby laughed: "Oh, and how does she look at me then? Am I missing some lovey-dovey, star crossed gazes or something?"

"Oh god no, she lets you see those awful looks. Way too gooie for me, but you two seem to be into it." Leaning back in her chair, folding her arms, Nora smiled mischievously at Ruby. "All I'm saying is that the only thing keeping you two apart is the both of you acting like bumbling idiots."

That piqued the redhead's curiosity. "Seriously, tell me!" Ruby leaned forward on her own chair and sarcastically asked "So, how is she looking at me then? Should I be worried? Scared? Feeling like I should run from some _sexual predator_?"

With a snort, Nora glanced out the window, checking the street for threats quickly before looking back at Ruby. "Well, when you're around, Weiss's all sweet and reserved, good old formal Weiss..." Nora trailed off for a second, before leaning in and saying: "but when you aren't watching, she gets this look in her eyes. It's like she wants to strip you down, throw you against a wall and fu-"

"NORA!"

Laughing as she settled back down, leaning back in her chair with enough force that its front legs lifted off the ground, Nora sighed: "You asked..."

"She does not!"

"She absolutely does. Now you do something with that fact and stop wasting time. You aren't getting any younger, that's for sure..."

Ruby sat silently for a second, thinking and dwelling on that. "It's... it's just..."

Suddenly, a hollow peal rang out as one of the bells on the wall shook. After it's momentary metallic chirp, the room went entirely silent.

"Hold that thought...," Nora breathed, already standing up with her gun held loosely in her hand. Walking over to where they all hung, Nora rested her fingers on each bell in turn, feeling for which one was still shaking. She moved through the first five, hesitated on the sixth, and then put a hand down on the seventh. "This one. It's the street you and Weiss came down."

Ruby was already up, out of her chair and walking towards the locked exit. The redhead looking forward to stretching her legs and leaving this conversation behind. Nora had already given her enough to think about, and she was afraid of getting overloaded if the ginger kept talking for too much longer. "Alright, let's go deal."

As Nora followed Ruby's shadow out of the storeroom, she grumbled silently: "_Let's go deal?! _And you still think you aren't changing back to the old you? Everybody can see it. Weiss is literally dying for it. You're the only one slow on the uptake."

* * *

Ruby followed barely two feet behind the older woman, who weaved through the shadowy alleys and back streets as though she had them branded into her memory. Nora slowed down as she came to the corner of the street they'd been walking towards, and stopped at the edge of the wall.

Nora leaned her head out from behind the corner for a quarter of a second, less than a twitch, and then immediately pulled back. "Two, both stumbling around maybe twenty feet back right. One's still tripped over the wire." She pumped her shotgun, already prepared to lean out and fire.

"Whoa whoa, hey there, bullets are pricey..." Ruby placed a hand on Nora's shoulder, and then smiled brightly. "If you would allow me..."

"Be my guest, I'll cover you I guess."

Ruby pulled out her new knife, a spare she'd found in the armory. At first, it looked like a simple iron T, the cross guard's arms tapering in slightly at the end back towards the pommel. A small B was etched into the meeting place between the guard and the grip, and when Ruby pressed down on a hidden trigger under the letter, a five inch long, inch and a half wide blade sprung out of the hilt. To Ruby, it felt more like she was using a miniature sword than an actual knife.

"Yeah, cover me with a shotgun, I'm sure that'll go great. Blow both me and whatever you're pointing at away in a flash."

Ruby then swung around the corner, not taking the time to get ready or prepare. Nora waited a second and then followed behind, wondering if she'd actually have to help Ruby.

She didn't, and watching the redhead at work, Nora was undoubtedly impressed. Ruby was efficient, she was clean... and she was brutal. The redhead swept up to one of the infected, stabbed it in the temple before she was even noticed, and like a flash of red whirled over and gutted the other one like a pig before it had the chance to even see the other Shambler had fallen.

Stepping up to the carnage, watching as Ruby quickly silenced the still writhing infected, Nora whistled and nodded at the redhead. "Nice work. Guess I get to keep my bullets for another day."

Ruby just nodded back, wiping her dagger off on the pant leg of the infected before her, before clicking the switch again and pulling the blade back in. "Good knife... I'm surprised nobody else was using it."

"Eh, to each their own. Blade's a tad thin for my taste, I'd probably snap it in under an hour opening a tuna can or something..."Nora looked off at the setting sun, frowning at the day's end. "Just a few more hours, and the day'll be over."

Shrugging, Ruby couldn't really bring herself to care._ 'Tomorrow will bring the same. It always does...'_

Gesturing to the two leaking bodies below her, Ruby asked: "Should we move these?"

Nora looked back at Ruby, thought about it for a second, and then sighed. "Probably... but I honestly don't feel like it. We'll do that tomorrow, we're both on watch again."

"M'kay..."

Watching Ruby stand up, her back outlined against the orange sky, Nora still seemed bothered. "... It seems off." She looked back at Ruby, and then muttered: "It's silly, but I always say its felt like thirteen O'clock for the past few years... I guess I'm still waiting for the feeling to break."

Ruby didn't catch Nora's meaning. "As in Military time?"

"No... It's, it's like... I don't know... it's felt like this world shouldn't be happening now. Like Beacon tower's broken clock hands have rolled over into something that can't exist... it's like they dragged us all into this, I don't know, forever twilight. As stupid as that sounds I mean."

Ruby could immediately sympathize with the feeling. "I know what you mean... I don't know, I don't think this feeling ever goes away. It wouldn't be good if you let it. You just learn to deal with it."

"You've felt it too?" Nora's eyes watched Ruby, bright and somewhat hopeful that somebody else would finally get the lonely feeling she'd carried around in the pit of her heart for the past few years. The ache that nobody seemed to get, even after she'd spent so many afternoons trying to explain the sensation to Ren and the others.

"Yeah... it faded for a while, but I'm noticing it again..."

"Hmph...," Nora huffed, seeming relieved that somebody else could finally sympathize. "Whelp, here's where I leave you."

Ruby just raised an eyebrow at Nora, her face making the question on her mind more than clear enough.

"I've gotta go trade in ration cards, two person job. One person on cart duty, one to make sure nobody tries to swipe anything."

With a smile, Ruby asked: "And which one are you?"

"Depends... I'm going with Pyrrha, so I'm active thug today."

"Huh, you know, I can kinda see it..."

Nora smirked at the remark. "Yeah, somehow I got branded as the group's muscly psychopath to the town... So, anyway, who do you want me to send out here with you, Ren or Jaune?"

"Uhhhh... R-Ren's good I guess... I can just watch for clickers on my own though, you don't need to send anybody."

Nora now smiled, chuckling to herself for a moment before asking: "Do you still think Jaune was upset?"

"Nope. Just send Ren please."

"It _was_ his fault you know..." She kept on going, obviously enjoying Ruby's cringe at the memory. "I mean, everyone could see that you looked real green around the gills, and Jaune runs up and hugs you, swinging you around in the air like an idiot."

The redhead couldn't help but shiver at the memory. "And on that day, I took the 'best introductions' title away from Weiss."

"Oh come on, you hadn't eaten anything beforehand and it was mostly water. Jaune needed a bath anyway, and even he laughed after the shock."

"Just... just send Ren..."

"Hmph, if that's what you want." Nora started to turn away, and then immediately turned back. "Also, just to let you know, the most dreaded time in a woman's life is coming up for me in four days..." After letting that sentence hang in the air for a moment, Nora sighed bitterly:"..._Thirty_. And apocalypse or not, I still expect you to get me a gift..."

Before Ruby could even begin to argue, Nora slipped in one more comment that froze the redhead dead in her tracks. "And I've got to say, getting asked out on a birthday would probably be pretty romantic..."

Ruby wondered for a second, and then replied: "And somewhat stupid too. I mean, isn't that just like asking a girl to prom on live T.V. or in front of the entire school? Kinda just cornering them into saying yes?"

Nora just shrugged her shoulders. "We're all allowed to be stupid, especially when under all this pressure to try not to be... Ren hates it, but I can't remember a week going by where I don't walk in on him dancing by himself, just alone in a room while pretending to play DDR..." Nora looked off into the distance, laughing at the memory. "That mental image kinda punches a giant hole in the tough, stoic persona he's going for, doesn't it?"

And with that, followed by the swish of her coat tails, Nora turned and walked off, whistling and chuckling at the thoughtful look on Ruby's face as she went. Nora called one final remark over her shoulder as she walked off, grinning back to the redhead standing against the descending sun. "Be stupid, alright! Lord knows I nobody'll ever hold that title longer than I have!"

* * *

And now back to the room, waiting for Ren to come and keep her company, Ruby laid out sadly on a neglected and loveseat. As she sat and stewed, Ruby couldn't help but dwell on everything Nora had told her. She'd been right on quiet a lot, even if shed simplified some of the trickier parts.

Trying to distract herself, knowing that she wouldn't be able to act like a fool once Ren arrived, Ruby picked up her own rifle and tried to balance it on her face like her ginger haired companion had been doing earlier. _'This is not as hard as Nora was making it look...'_ Actually, after a few seconds, Ruby could just sit perfectly still and keep her rifle level.

Once she could keep the rifle there across the bridge of her nose with ease, Ruby tried to challenge herself and make the task more difficult.

Now standing in the middle of the room, Ruby kept her face looking up as she balanced her rifle pointing straight up on her face, the butt of her gun resting on the tip of her nose and right in the small dip between her eyebrows. The redhead only had to twitch her head back and forth every once in a while to keep the gun from falling over. Other than that, she could just stand leaning back and keeping the rifle pointed into the air.

Again, it was pretty easy for Ruby to keep the gun balanced on her face, only requiring an occasional twitch to keep her rifle from toppling off her head. 'Okay,_ this is giving me a headache, I'm gonna be cross eyed-' _

Just as Ruby thought that, a rapping knock came at the storeroom's door, and the startling noise made the redhead flinch to the point where the rifle nearly bounced off her face. But other than shifting a little bit up her face, now more on top of her forehead and off her nose entirely, Ruby kept the rifle in place. _"I mean, I spent this long trying to prove I have balance, why stop now? If Ren says anything, I can shut him up with Nora's comment on DDR.'_

Walking over slowly with her arms out to her sides for balance, Ruby made her way to the door while keeping her gun still propped upwards on her forehead. Finding the entrance, still looking up, Ruby blindly slid her hands up and down the door frame until she found and undid the door's heavy deadbolt.

"It's open Ren, come on in!" Stepping back, Ruby kept her arms to her sides, still trying to keep her center aligned with the rifle balancing on her forehead. _'This is not that hard, Nora's sense of balance must be-"_

"Hmph, funny sight."

Ruby jumped, and the gun went flying off Ruby's face and noisily clattered on the floor. Looking back at the voice, Ruby realized that it wasn't Ren who'd shown up at all. She had to look down a bit, because inside the space Ren's tall and muscular figure would have occupied in the doorway, a short, slim, snow white haired girl stood in his place instead.

"Oh! U-uh, hey Weiss..."

Weiss smirked, stepping into the room. "Don't stop on my account, looks like you had something impressive going on."

"Nah... I'm good, I make a fool out of myself enough as it is, I don't need to do extra work..." Weiss laughed at the joke, and Ruby smiled back. "But, uh, why are you here?"

"Um, because you asked for me? You did send Nora for me right?" Taking off her coat, which was now unnecessary in the warm spring weather, Weiss threw her bleached white leather duster to the side and over one of the spare chairs in the room. "I was just lounging around with Ren, Pyrrha and Mercury back at the dorm rooms. Then Nora comes bursting in and says that you want me to join you for the rest of your watch. She then grabbed Pyrrha and left... said something about getting food for the week?"

"Ah... oh, okay yeah." While Ruby's responses to Weiss were meek, inside she was screaming bloody murder at a certain ginger haired friend. Who the redhead could just imagine grinning like an idiot over corralling Ruby and Weiss together. _'THAT SCRAWNY, BEAK NOSED, FRIZZY HAIRED FRECKLY FREAK! I DON'T NEED HER MEDDLING AND GETTING IN MY WAY! I CAN HANDLE MY OWN LOVE LI-'_

"Ruby?" Turning back, Weiss caught the angry look on Ruby's face as she sat down on an old coffee table, completely disregarding the chair next to it. It was somewhat out of character for Weiss, the complete disregard for manners. "You okay?"

Shaking her head, trying to remove the haze of red from her mind, Ruby hesitantly smiled at Weiss. "Yeah, I'm just reliving an argument I had with Nora earlier today."

"Oh really? I thought you were getting well along with Nora. What was it what about? Anything I should be worried about?"

"No, nothing worth sharing. Mostly stupid things really..." Ruby mumbled, the quick excuses somewhat truthful. Weiss watched her for a few seconds, and then shrugged her shoulders, letting the subject drop.

"Oh, hey, since you mentioned Mercury," Ruby began, leaning forward as she talked, "how is he? Still sulking in his corner?"

Weiss rolled her eyes, the gesture extremely pompous... and pretty Weiss-like too. "As if I'm paying attention. He's a grown man, he needs to learn to deal with his own problems."

"So he is?"

"Hmph," was the blonde's only reply, although Ruby could easily take that as a yes. _'I hope he'll come around soon... really it's only Pyrrha and Jaune who're giving him a hard time...' _

"So, anything happen during the day?"

Perking up, dragging herself out of her thoughts, Ruby answered: "Yeah, two infected tripped a wire earlier in the day."

"Hm... good, Ren said it usually only happens once a day, so we probably won't have to go out again..."

"Look at you, miss slacker!" Ruby grinned as she leaned even farther forward, almost entirely off the edge of her chair at this point. "I thought you'd be all gung ho for doing a job?" All she got out of Weiss in return was a loud snort. "Hey, now that I think about it there was something we, Nora and I, talked about earlier during the day..."

Raising an eyebrow, Weiss asked: "Oh, so something worth sharing? I thought you were going to stay sealed on whatever you two talked about out here on your own... secret plans, discussion, murder plots and what not..."

"Pfft! You think Nora could ever keep a secret!" Ruby laughed for a few seconds, really chuckling at Weiss's comment. "At most, I'd give her a day before she blabbed anything she'd been told to keep under wraps. If she was all alone by herself, Nora'd probably learn to raise the dead, just so she could tell somebody!"

She remained stone faced for a second, but even Weiss couldn't help but give in to Ruby's laughing. "Yeah, I guess you're right. I'd definitely never put her in charge of a secret... anyways, what were you guys talking about then?"

"Oh, um..." Ruby stalled for a second, trying to make it seem like she was trying to think of how to phrase what she and Nora had argued about earlier. Really, the redhead was trying to think of something believable that she and Nora would even talked about in the first place. "Uh... well, I was wondering, and then I didn't agree with Nora's answer... well, why were hunters famous?"

"Are you serious?" Weiss smirked, her lips twitching as she fought off a smile. "I mean, you were the embodiment of hunter idolizing as a kid, remember? You don't know, and how the hell should any of us have a clue?"

"Well, that's it, isn't it? I loved hunters, thought they were all badasses-"

"Great way of putting it," Weiss interjected, smiling at the thoughtful look on Ruby's face. It was the old look of when Ruby would be struggling over one of Oobleck's or Goodwitch's harder lessons. And, Weiss had to admit... it was pretty cute on the redhead.

"I thought they were all badasses," Ruby repeated, scowling that the one-time heiress as she talked. "But, now that I think about it, why did I?"

"I don't know Ruby, same reason people look up to policemen and firefighters I guess... they just represent bravery, courage... general goodness. That and your own mother was one. It'd be weird if you _hadn't_ looked up to them."

Ruby shook her head, already enjoying the argument. "Alright, so that explains me. But it doesn't really explain everybody else. I mean, why did every kid want to be a hunter? Why did they all independently go "that is the cool guy, the awesome woman?" What about them huh?"

Weiss sighed loudly, pinching the bridge of her nose as she listened to Ruby's rambling. "Are we really going to get into child psychology?"

"Why not, we've got a few hours out here, don't we?"

Heaving out a heavy breath, Weiss thought for a few seconds before she responded. "Well, you dolt, I'd say it's basic elitism."

At the blank stare from Ruby, the blonde had to smile and laugh. Although the redhead bobbed her head along with Weiss, it was obvious she had no idea what Weiss's answer meant. "You have no clue what that means, do you?"

"Ah...no, I kinda... yeah, I'm stumped."

"Hmph. Well, how many students were in the first year of students during the average year at Beacon?"

"Uh... like six teams or so worth?"

"Yes, I'd say that would be a close aproximatio-"

"Whoa whoa whoa, let's not use big words and have me get lost this early on." Cracking her knuckles while she looked out the window, Ruby muttered: "Speak like you would to a seven year old, make this easier on both of us..."

Scowling, Weiss grumbled: "I always told myself I'd force your vocabulary to grow..."

"Yeah, and you gave up about a week or so into knowing me, remember?" Ruby smiled at the memory, of both the first time they met and a bunch of other occasions that confirmed that statement. "I think you were right when you said 'Dolt' would make a good fit for the rest of my life unless I shaped up."

"Never too late you know, Ren and I could still turn you into a proper lady, wouldn't be that hard since we've got time now..."

Ruby shook her head. "Nah, I think I'm fine with what I've got going for me... Anyway, back to the huntress talk."

"Alright. Some schools had a few more first years, some had a few less, but Beacon was a pretty good average, and makes a good average to use. Usually a team would drop out or disband and quit in the four years before they graduated, so at the end, lets say Beacon let loose 20 or so trained and skilled hunters at the end of every year." Weiss rubbed something into the dust in the coffee table she was sitting on, and from where she was in the room all Ruby could really see was a bunch of numbers and lines getting scratched into the dust. That, and Ruby could hear random mutterings from Weiss on her math under her breath.

"...about half of us make it the average twenty years to retirement... let our license expire to go do something else, although I'm still counting them, one a hunter always..."

"...thirteen schools allowed to give out a hunter license..."

"...four hundred or so get to be idiots... killed the second they got out of school and their licenses stamped..."

"...maybe ten or so hunters to keep they're license and become teachers, run each school..."

Weiss tapped her fingers a few times, crossed out some of the lines in her dusty math as she reworked a few of her numbers over, and finally looked up. "Alright, by my math-"

Ruby cut off the blonde, smiling mischievously. "Is it somewhere near 2652?"

"... I got 2330, where did you get your's?"

Chuckling, Ruby turned her knife over in her fingers and said: "As a team leader, I was given access to statistics on the org... when we shipped out, I saw that there were 2652 registered and expired hunter licenses at the time." Ruby clicked the button on her knife a few times, pulling the blade in and out, watching the piece of steel flash in the dim room as it was unsheathed from inside the hilt and grip before disappearing back inward again. "I think it was some report on drafting numbers, old teams who got called up but never showed..."

"Well, you could have started all this by sharing that with me, save me the trouble."

"Can't make it too easy around here for you, I need at least one of us to stay smar-"

Weiss snapped at Ruby, not harshly but firmly: "Stop interrupting me, it's killing my train of thought."

Staring at the bells on the wall across her, Weiss started saying: "So if there were twenty seven hundred hunters... there were so few of us out of the world's four hundred million people, of course we'd be respected by everyone. I don't think we even make up a thousandth of the population... there were probably more billionaires on the planet than hunters!"

Ruby couldn't really do anything but whistle to Weiss's answer. "Wow... it sounds like so many hunters when you give the number... but when you give the percent, it sounds so tiny instead..."

"It's kind of depressing... kind of like we're a species going extinct."

"Hmph," Ruby snorted, laughing at Weiss's thoughtful tone. "What? Of decent people?"

" I guess... I don't know, I still think the world needs hunters. We helped the world... made it better I guess..."

"Okay then, here's a silver lining." Ruby thought how to phrase what she was thinking before she spoke. It could be taken badly if she misspoke her thoughts. "If there are less people in the world, well that means there are more old hunters in proportion, right?"

"That's one way of looking at it... Actually, that reminds me of something I argued with Nora and Jaune about a few days ago." Weiss leaned in, wiping the dust on her fingers off on her pants. "Have you ever noticed how every time we ask who else is around Beacon, we never really get a straight answer?"

Ruby just gave Weiss a puzzled look. She hadn't noticed anything like that at all. "What do you mean?"

"I don't know, I've just got this weird gut feeling... it's like every time I ask one of them 'who else made it' or 'who else that we'd recognize is around town', I just get brushed off with some hasty, cryptic answer..."

"Hmmmm... you think they don't want us to know about somebody else in the city?"

Weiss merely shrugged. "It's the only answer I could come up with... I mean, what else makes sense?"

Ruby crossed her arms, thinking. Now that she actually thought back, the redhead actually could think of times where either Nora, Jaune, Pyrrha, or Ren would just sidestep a question relating to the town. Usually, Ruby never paid the deflections any more thought than that. The JNPR group was weird, and them being shifty around the past hadn't set off any red flags for Ruby. She'd guessed they were just like Weiss... ashamed of the past, and reluctant to think back on it.

"Maybe...," Ruby began, trying to think of a reason for all their secrecy. "Maybe they think there's somebody else out in the city we'd rather meet up with? Somebody else you and I'd trust more?"

Weiss's only response was simple. "Huh..." The blonde furrowed her brow, thinking about the idea for a minute before shaking her head. "I can't think of anybody I'd trust more than them though... can you?" Standing up, starting to pace, Weiss asked out loud: "I mean, it was us and them at Beacon. Team's RWBY and JNPR, the top two... was there ever anybody we were as close with, somebody else I'm just not remembering?"

"Uh... an old teacher maybe? Maybe Ozpin or Goodwitch's in the city? "

"No... I'd still go with all of JNPR..."

"But they may not think we'd choose them." It sounded weak, but that was really the best justification she could come up with on the spot. Ruby tried thinking for a few more seconds, but eventually fell to a total blank. "We might just be blowing this way out of proportion... Maybe they're just a bit on the weird side?" At a questioning look from Weiss, which more than anything looked like she couldn't believe Ruby's easy answer, the redhead continued. "I mean, if they're as secluded as they seem to have been for the past seven years, then they've been cooped up with just those four to talk amongst... I mean, hell, they'd probably go stir crazy after all that, I'm surprised they haven't been putting heads on spikes and running around like madmen..."

Weiss could see it somewhat... but the idea of a socially awkward team JNPR being the answer just didn't fit well enough. "No, it doesn't make sense, they all seem fine-"

"So then when we get back tonight," Ruby interjected, "we'll put the question directly to them. That way, there's no worrying over what we don't know. We'll know if they're lying, and we'll go from there."

"Tch! You think it'll go well, just asking them point blank?"

"You kidding? With Nora, Ren, and Pyrrha being their usual selves, they'll probably be begging to just get the discussion over with and out of the way." Ruby smiled for a second, seeing Weiss's posture relax as she loosened up, and added: "also, I still think there's nothing to worry about, and that you're just blowing this all out of proportion..."

Weiss looked down at her hand, annoyed by something, and rubbed it against the wall. "I hope you're right, but I'd rather just know... besides, I'm sure whatever it is, it's not too scandalous anyway..." Still scrubbing her hand against the rough floral wallpaper, pulling it back to her and rubbing her palm together quickly, Weiss looked even more annoyed as she clapped her hands together a few times.

"Weiss, what are you doing?"

Brushing both her hands off on her jeans, Weiss muttered angrily: "I don't know... my hands feel sticky for some reason, ever since I worked out that math on the table..." As she was talking, Weiss pointed back the coffee table she'd been perched on, with crisscrossing lines ruining the even dusting on the surface.

Ruby looked at the table for a minute, really not taking in what Weiss had said. But after a second, Ruby remembered a conversation she'd had with Nora earlier in the day, before Weiss had shown up.

And before she could get the chance to explain to Weiss, who was watching the redhead's face change to the same deep shade of scarlet as the tips of her hair, the darker tone of the room disappeared instantly. Because Ruby burst out into probably the hardest fit of laughter she'd had in over five years.

* * *

"I'm never setting foot in that filthy place again!"

"It's not that, it's not-," was as far as Ruby got, before she was keeled over into her hicupping laughs again. It had been on and off struggle to keep a straight face ever since Ruby had huffed out what she had found so funny earlier. Weiss, obvious enough, had found no amusement in the circumstance. She'd left her jacket hung over the chair where she'd thrown it, and had spent the last few hours of their watch standing in the center of the room, away from every surface and piece of furniture as Ruby continued to heckle her from a comfortable seat on the room's couch.

"I'm serious Ruby, I'm not going back out there!" Weiss walked along with her right hand still hovering out away from her, and she glancing down kept giving her arm angry looks, as though she'd want to burn the limb off.

"Come on," Ruby chuckled, wiping away a few tears happily, "we've seen worse. Grosser, more disgusting. I can start naming a few if you want..."

"I don't think you could." As they cut across the academies tall grass medians, already within shouting distance of the dorm rooms where JNPR had set up base, where they had first met the group, Weiss muttered: "I'm gonna have to take like nine baths to scrub that filth off, and these clothes are all ruined, might as well burn them..."

Coming up to the large wooden doors, cracked open as always, Ruby laughed at the pouting girl behind her. "If I clean up the room the next few times I'm there, will you change your mind? It's fun, you out there with me... it's nice talking, just the two of us..."

"You can do whatever you want," Weiss mumbled bitterly. "I'm still not going back into that foul room ever again..."

Even though she said that, Ruby could tell she'd softened Weiss up with those last few lines. _'Maybe Nora's right... I think she really has forgiven me...'_

Ruby stepped inside the grand foyer, already warmly lit by a fire crackling in the rooms gigantic, ornate fire pit. The waving flames cast long, flickering shadows across the room's tall ceilings and plaster white walls, still clean after all this time and dyed orange by the light. Long and tall painting of the schools greatest students were still hanging on their hooks, although the black lacquer frames had been neglected of their once regular polishing and had turned a dull ash with time.

Whoever had designed the space had possessed great vision as an artist, and the hall was the clear embodiment of a single word.

Grand.

But even though the fire was snapping and chirping merrily, and the clean walls were glowing brightly, the second Ruby and Weiss entered they felt the room's unmistakable dark tension. It washed Ruby of her happiness, ripping all her euphoria away and replacing it with a lump of grim worry. Something had gone horribly wrong...

Around the fire stood Jaune and Ren, both silent and still. And if front of the flames, both of their faces hidden by the flickering of the light, were Mercury and Pyrrha. Pyrrha was lying, perched up on an elbow, across the carpeted floor, and Mercury was hovering over her in the shadow of the fire. It almost felt like Ruby and Weiss had stumbled in on something private, something intimate.

Although from here the two intruders could easily Mercury cradling Pyrrha's face, every one of his fingers a metallic silver. Just as Ruby saw it he looked up, and from the shadows his eyes leapt out, lacking any sense of humor.

"We've got a problem..."

* * *

_**Thanks for just reading, and I'll see you all around next chapter!**_


	16. Jackal

"Whelp, your nose is _definitely_ busted..."

"Oh reably?" Pyrrha's voice dribbled out past her swollen lips, her word's sarcasm almost visible in the air. After all this, her contempt for Mercury was still as clear as ever, even with the blood in her nose muddying her usual punctual and concise tone. Her mashed up face was covered in so much blood that it was hard to tell what the redhead was even thinking from her facial expressions, other than the broadest and clearest of emotions.

Pyrrha had given them all quite a scare. She'd only stumbled in a few moments earlier, her entire front soaked a ruddy red. Her sleeve, which she'd been using to try and stopper the blood leaking out of her broken nose, was caked in crusty red flakes. Pyrrha had nearly fallen on her already bloodied face again as she rushed into the entrance, startling the three men all gathered round in the room chatting pointlessly when she crashed through the door.

_'...Startled is putting it lightly,' _Mercury thought to himself. Pyrrha had been so messed up that when she walked in that Mercury thought a Stalker had somehow made it this far past their barriers. He'd almost jumped up and stabbed her right there, nearly ending both her life and probably his as well on a simple mistake. '

Luckily Jaune and Ren had both been a bit quicker on the uptake, although Jaune simply went white as a sheet at the sight of Pyrrha. That moment of shock lasted for a second, before the both started to rush towards her and were immediately shoved aside by Mercury. After he'd seen the lack of fear in their eyes, he caught on fast enough.

A few minutes had passed, and quite a lot had changed. A blanket had been spread out on the floor, and Mercury was now crouching down over his patient, with Pyrrha glaring up at him from the floor.

"Merbury, could you just go awa-"

"Stop talking, you're making the bones jiggle around more...," Mercury muttered, making the observations as Pyrrha's face still twitched and shifted under his fingers. He was rubbing up and down the bridge of Pyrrha's nose with his thumbs, hooking the rest of his fingers behind her head and holding her skull in place. Mercury had to keep her from jerking out of his aura's reach. "Also, stop being a baby, I'm dulling the pain! You'd be screaming bloody murder now that the adrenaline has worn off if I wasn't here!"

"Geb your hanbs away frob me, I'm fine enoubh as ihb is!"

"If your fine with looking like a half melted porcelain doll for the rest of your life, sure." Mercury wasn't exaggerating, and while he was trying not to show it, he couldn't help but find a tiny amount of contempt for Pyrrha's beaten face. After how she'd mercilessly tormented and pecked at him for the last few weeks, Mercury would be lying if he hadn't grown to loathe the second redhead in his life.

_'Still...,'_ Mercury thought as he continued his work, _'this is too much. Nobody deserves this...'_

Pyrrha's face was bad. The woman's nose was clearly broken, its bridge bent out of shape and angling up at her right eyebrow instead of pointing straight in-between her eyes. The break wasn't clean, and along with the thick red blood around the wound, Pyrrha's skin was turning a patchy mixture of molten purples and greens as blood leaked out under the skin as well as above it.

The rest of her once angular features weren't much cleaner. Past all her wincing and hissing, Pyrrha hadn't said anything more than that she'd gotten jumped when she and Nora started their way into town. That may have been true, but Mercury also had the feeling that somebody had taken out some pent up rage attacking her. Whoever she'd fought had clearly put some effort into stomping on her face with the hard edge of their boot. Pyrrha's upper lip was busted clean open, and the same was true for her right eyebrow. Pyrrha's eyes were both swollen, the right entirely sealed shut. And that was just what anyone could see on the surface. Mercury could feel the bones inside her face, crisscrossed and lined with spidery fractures.

_'This was just cruel...,' _Mercury thought to himself. '_I wouldn't even think of doing this to anyone... Even after all of her acting like... well… a bit of a bitch.'_

Mercury didn't let his thoughts show though, and kept up his usual smiling bravado. "And you should drop the tough girl act. You got drop kicked to the face, and from the looks of things got stomped on a few times after that. I'm impressed enough that you didn't get knocked out cold instantly..."

"...Wheb goh ohher tings to worry abouh... We shoulb-"

"And where do you think Jaune went?" Holding Pyrrha's face in his hands, twisting it side to side as he watched the bones shift and do days worth of healing in the span of a few seconds, Mercury sighed: "Your husband didn't just run off the second he saw his beaten wife walk in the door for no good reason."

"And thabs why I shoulb geb going-"

Pyrrha stopped suddenly, hushed in surprise as Mercury grabbed the bridge of her nose between his thumb and forefinger. "Forewarning Pyrrha, this is going to hurt like a bitch."

"D-don'b you dare- ARGHHH!" Her threats ignored, Mercury quickly twisted the dislodged bone back into place without warning, hearing a loud, almost stony click as the cartilage shifted back into place. Hissing at the sudden and startling pain, Pyrrha nearly jerked her head out of his hands as she kicked out against the pain. Mercury had to lean forward to keep her with him as she scuttled back across the floor, and winced when her boot connected with his side.

"Don't Pyrrha, you'll want me here to keep you from feeling pain and screaming your head off."

"FBUCK YOU MERBURY!" Pyrrha, who was still trying to push herself out of Mercury's hands, angrily snapped: "I'd radder geb anobher beating bhan your helbp! Jaune shoulbn't be off on hibs own!"

Rolling his eyes, Mercury sighed while twisting Pyrrha's face to the right, so he could watch the more damaged eye socket reshape itself. "Believe me, the look on his face made it seem like the last thing he wanted to do was leave you with just me and Ren..."

_'Speaking of...' _At his mention of the other man, Mercury looked up from Pyrrha and over to the rooms other... silent inhabitant. Mercury didn't really know what to do about him. He'd just gotten back maybe two minutes before the beaten redhead, walking into the room with a light smile on his face. _'He's at least been civil... he asked me how I was doing when he got back. We'd only just started talking...'_

Standing with his back to them, Ren was just leaning heavily against one of the room's pillars, with his shoulders slumped inward and his head pointed at the floor. Whether he was deep in his thoughts, or lost among them, Mercury couldn't tell. Ren hadn't said a single word. Since Jaune left fifteen minutes ago, the blonde roaring at everyone in the room to stay put as he stormed out, Ren hadn't moved an inch. He'd only listened to what Pyrrha had slurred out, with a mixture of horror and dread plastered across his usually bland face...

... Listen to the woman who'd left with a partner and stumbled back alone.

* * *

"Why are you still helping me?" While she asked, Pyrrha puckered her lips and raise her eyebrows, stretching the new scar tissue and absentmindedly noting how much stiffer the shiny pink skin felt. "My face is fine."

Suddenly Weiss peered in over Mercury's shoulder, leaning down so that she could get a good look at the injured woman on the floor. Her straight edged snow white hair hung down low and tickled Mercury's ear as she spoke, the strands bobbing up and down in the air. "Actually, she's right. You did a really good job..."

Turning the redhead's head back and forth a few times, feeling Pyrrha resist him as he did so, Mercury couldn't shake the feeling in his gut. Her nose was fine, except for a bit swollen and red across the bridge. And other than the shiny new patches of glistening pink scar on her face from the healed slices, Pyrrha was only a bit redder in the face than usual. Really, the two were right, she was totally fine. But he still wasn't sure...

"Weiss," Mercury muttered, "I know that Pyrrha looks fine. But does she look like Pyrrha?"

"...Wait what?" Weiss looked at back at the girl on the floor, who was looking back up at the two kneeling above her, obviously just as puzzled as the blonde was. "Yes, I'd say she did. I don't believe in doppelgangers, so unless you're getting superstitious on me, she looks fine."

Mercury just shook his head at the blonde. She hadn't understood what he meant.

Faces were tricky. And from all the ones he'd messed up on in the past, Mercury also remembered that along with just being difficult to fix, they were also agonizingly easy to screw up. A face was composed of so many thin interlocking plates, always individual and unique, that the bones were oh so easy to misplace. If he'd consciously made changes and healed the bones, Mercury could have fully healed Pyrrha in under an hour. But while doing that, he risked changing how Pyrrha looked, how the bones sat and rested under her skin. So he let the healing take its natural course. It's agonizingly slow, dreadfully tedious course.

Still, he had to stop, sooner rather than later before things could go bad. "Ughhhh...Alright then... Pyrrha," Mercury began, looking the redhead in the eye. "Just to let you know, when I dull pain, I keep your nerves from talking to the damaged areas. So... this is going to hurt like a bitch when I pull back. Your body is going to think it just got injured again, and then it'll try to warn you of the pain all over again. Pressure will help a bit, but other than that you're just gonna have to deal with it for the few minutes.

"Mercury, I'm not a wuss, I'll be-"

But before Pyrrha could say "fine", Mercury pulled his hands away from her face and broke contact with her skin. A couple of ovals of silver remained for a few seconds on Pyrrha's face before they too faded off entirely.

"See Mercury," Pyrrha began, sitting up straight so that she was on level with Mercury again. "I told you I'd be fi-" she began, before the redhead swooned as though she'd been punched in the gut, and nearly fell back to the ground again. Pyrrha's hands shot up to her face, and a low groan escaped her lips as the pain her healer had been describing finally arrived. Groaning in agony, Pyrrha rocked back and forth on her back before rolling over and pressing her face into the smooth marble floor below her, trying to crush the pain out of her aching cheeks.

Weiss's eyes widened at the old champion's sudden reaction to the pain. "Are you sure she'll be...?"

Mercury didn't catch Weiss's hanging question though, he just sat crouched next to his writhing patient. He was staring at his hands, still half held out towards Pyrrha. Almost wistful, as though he still wanted to help her. Weiss swatted him with the back of her hand at his arm, getting his attention. Pointing to the woman on the floor, Weiss again asked: "Are you sure that she's fine? That looks pretty extreme."

Mercury stared at Weiss dully, his mind having a hard time wrapping itself around her words. He looked down at his hands again, flexed them once or twice, and then shoved them into his jacket pockets. "She'll be fine, it'll ease up in a few minutes... she'd be better if we had a Tylenol or something around here, but we don't, sooooooo..."

"Hmph, alright then," Weiss mumbled, her eyes flicking off to the left as they spoke to each other. Mercury followed her eyes, and began watching what the blonde was already looking at. It was probably the most important thing going on in this room. Mercury didn't understand why Weiss wasn't with them. If he hadn't been tending to Pyrrha, he certainly would have.

"I'm not getting involved," Weiss stated, landing right on the money with guessing Mercury's thoughts. "They're the three who'll be making the call anyway. They all speak for somebody here."

Mercury looked up, and he could agree with what Weiss said. In a hushed circle on the other side of the hall Ren, Jaune and Ruby were all huddled together, in a silent shouting match on what the night's next move should be. Even though she couldn't hear what they were saying, Weiss could tell enough from their individual facial expressions. As they circled around, snapping and snipping insults, it was clear to see that both Ruby and Ren were looking for blood. Jaune seemed more hesitant, more reserved and tense than the other two.

It seemed like Jaune was losing his side of the fight.

"What do you think they could be arguing about?" Weiss looked back at Mercury, wondering what could be holding them up. "Seems like an easy open and shut decision to me." It shouldn't have been going on for the past ten minutes, since Ruby and Weiss had gotten back.

A quivering voice came from between Mercury and Weiss, muffled downward into the floor. "Jaune probably wanted to solve this diplomatically, try to keep more of us from getting hurt or killed... and I'm guessing Ren wants to go rip apart whoever has Nora."

Weiss turned to Mercury, and commented dryly: "Three guesses where Ruby lies on the spectrum?"

Mercury cracking a joke without a shred of humor in his voice, answered: "Oh… I bet she wants to go take them daises and violets. Leave them a nice note with hearts for i's… hide a pipe bomb in the bottom of the flower basket…"

Before Weiss could get the chance to agree, a sudden, furious shriek from the other side of the room made the three of them jump. Pyrrha rocked back on her knees before she banged her head back into the ground a half second later, groaning again from another impact.

"I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS! FUCKING GROW A SET!" Whirling away from the circle, Ruby stalked back to Weiss, Mercury, and Pyrrha, Ren following close behind her. They both looked livid, Ren in particular looking more animated than Weiss had ever seen him. Standing in front of the trio on the floor, Ruby looked down on Mercury and asked in a harsh voice: "_We _are going to get Nora. You coming?"

Before Mercury could answer, Jaune rushed forward and started pleading with the two who'd totally dismissed him. "I want to get her back too! And we will! But going in looking to blow off faces isn't the way to do this! We can't just-"

"THIS IS EXACTLY THE TIME TO BLOW FACES OFF!" Screaming, leaning up on her toes and getting in Jaune's face, Ruby pointed down at the tall woman still on the floor. "LOOK AT WHAT THEY DID TO PYRRHA! TO YOUR OWN WIFE! HOW THE HELL CAN YOU EVEN THINK OF BEING CALM AT A TIME LIKE THIS! THEY DID ALL THAT TO HER, AND SHE WAS LUCKY ENOUGH TO GET WAY! WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK IS HAPPENING TO NORA?! DO YOU THINK THEY'RE JUST GIVING HER KNITTING LESSONS?!"

Jaune took a few unconscious steps back, his extra foot of height meaning nothing in comparison to Ruby. Right now, next to her, he was tiny. Especially while everyone could see the redhead was viewing the world through a spectrum of bloody crimson.

"I ran straight to the town, right to where everything happened and I saw what's going on." Jaune tried pleading, getting her to understand. "Us going in looking for-"

"SHUT THE FUCK UP!" Turning away from Jaune, disregarding the coward completely, Ruby turned back to Mercury. "Are you going to come help us?"

Mercury chased his own problems out of his head. He'd share his concerns with Ruby later. "Course I'm coming."

Ruby nodded her head at Mercury, not showing her relief that she could count on him to be there. Turning away and walking to a small table near the hall's main entrance, the redhead Ruby reached out and snatched her knife and Weiss's pistol off the counter top angrily.

A groan came from the floor, and Pyrrha looked up from the marble flooring, lowering her palms from her face. Her eyes were watery and closed to near slits. "…I'm coming too."

The only response throughout the entire room was a simple grunt from Ruby. Standing with her back towards everyone, she'd taken the clip out of Weiss's pistol and was counting the bullets inside. Apparently she was satisfied, because after she finished counting Ruby slapped the cartridge back into the gun's handle, cocking the slider back quickly and then aiming at an imaginary enemy in front of her.

Jaune stood there silently, feeling helpless as he saw everyone preparing to go to war. Even Pyrrha was off the floor, his wife gingerly swinging her rifle over her shoulder and wincing every time she tilted her head. "Pyrrha, this isn't the right way, we have to think before we just go rushing in. What if this goes wrong and even more of us get hurt... I, I've never seen you as badly injured..."

She stood silently for a moment, listening to what he had to say. "Jaune... the time for planning has passed." Pyrrha turned towards him, and she didn't look angry or happy in saying this. She looked like nothing really. "Nora's family. And for family, we put aside logic... we don't think about casualties when it comes to us as a whole. You don't think about saving just the head of a person in a car accident, you just pull them entirely out of the wreck and just hope they'll be okay. We put everything on the line for one person." Pyrrha stepped up and stood next to Jaune, reaching for and taking his hand. "Don't make me tell you things you already told me..."

His shoulders sagging, Jaune looked down at Pyrrha, not even hiding the look of dread on his face. "Alright, fine. Let's go and-"

"Shut it Arc," Ruby snapped from across the room, unable to hold her tongue any longer. "You don't get to sound all heroic now, after you suggested we '_be passive_'." She didn't even feel bad as she saw Jaune deflate, slumping in on himself. Maybe he'd lived this long because he was careful... but family should always come before preservation.

_'I wonder,'_ Ruby thought, _'would I have thought all this a few months ago too? Probably not... Twenty-twenty hindsight I guess... it's easy to see how dark you were when you've made it out of the shadows for the most part...'_

Weiss had watched all that unfold, and in truth she wasn't sure how to take it. Shaking her head, already knowing there'd be trouble to deal with because of this night in the future, Weiss crossed the room. Weaving around them all, Weiss slinked around the sulking Jaune, past a stone still Ren, a jittery Pyrrha, and obviously gloomy Mercury on her way across the room to Ruby.

'_Maybe that's how they all deal with nerves,' _Weiss wondered to herself, noticing as she walked passed each individual the short distance to Ruby. Ruby's back was to her, and even under the redhead's thin royal red jacket, Weiss could see her partner's shoulders raised in tension.

As she came up to Ruby, Weiss decided to throw caution to the wind. She reached up to Ruby, and rested a hand on the redhead's shoulder. Ruby stiffened briefly, before she let her shoulders relax under the blondes pale palm. "So... are you okay?"

"Mm-hm," was Ruby's short reply. Weiss couldn't tell if Ruby was being rude, or if her nerves were getting in the way of talking.

"That's not a reply…," Weiss muttered, trying to gauge the woman if front of her, who seemed lost in thought.

Ruby straightened a bit, to the point where resting her hand on the redhead's shoulder wasn't comfortable for Weiss, although she still kept speaking forward. "…I'm… I'm sorry, what did you say?"

"Nothing, nothing," the blonde sighed, shaking her head at her scatterbrained partner. "So... could I have my gun?" Weiss held out her hand, reaching for the silver and black military grade pistol in Ruby's hands.

Ruby turned towards Weiss, squaring her shoulders as she faced the blonde. Instead of handing Weiss back the pistol, Ruby clipped the blonde's holster to her belt, and shoved the gun into the plastic sling now hanging off her hip. Ruby tried to hide it, but Weiss could obviously see how uncomfortable the redhead was as she gingerly rested her hand on the pistol's solid wooden grip. Other than knives, Ruby had never liked a weapon she couldn't hold with two hands.

"You aren't coming." Ruby's eyes were flinty as she looked at Weiss, waiting for an answer.

Really, Weiss wasn't surprised by what the redhead was saying. She'd been expecting something like this. "Are we seriously going to-?"

"That's final, we aren't arguing about this." Ruby turned away from Weiss, towards the rest of the room, and said something that did surprise Weiss. "And Ren, you aren't either."

Across the room, Ren simply raised his head, coming out of his own thoughts and stared at Ruby coldly. He didn't have to say anything, or show any of it either. Everyone in the room knew exactly what he was thinking.

"Ruby, why would you-" Weiss started asking, before she was silence by a flick of the wrist by the redhead. Ruby felt colder, right now. More so than she had for the past few months. And when she spoke, what she said didn't come out as a conversation or an opinion.

Her words came out as orders.

"Ren, as much as I hate to sit you out, you'll probably make a bad call and do something stupid while we're getting Nora back tonight. I need clear heads, and you'll muddy things up."

Ruby turned to Weiss, and looking at the blonde, Weiss could actually see a small spark of sadness in the liquid mercury of Ruby's eyes. "I'm the group's best fighter, and I'll the one who'll make the most difference tonight. With you there, I'd be no more than a hypocrite for making Ren stay behind."

Standing around the halls entrance, a half dozen eyes watched Ruby's speech. Everyone else had already finished their prep, although from the looks on Pyrrha and Jaune's faces it was clear as day that they disagreed with Ruby's call. Mercury just stood back and watched all this unfold, only half paying attention to what was going on.

"Well, no point in stalling any longer... We're all ready anyways," Ruby muttered, counting the three ex-huntsmen that'd be joining her. Ruby couldn't help but smirk as she counted them. Walking into the city with these three at her sides, even sitting Weiss and Ren out, Ruby felt like she was over armed. Everyone one of them was a trained killer, just as dangerously equipped as she was, with the same training and skills to get this job done.

Turning away, the redhead reached out passed Weiss and wrapped her fingers around the edge of the hall's open door. "We're getting Nora back tonight Ren... and I promise we'll all be coming back tonight Weiss." She then swung the door open, and walked out into the cold night air, not waiting for the rest to follow her.

* * *

The walk between Beacon Academy and the outskirts of Beacon proper was maybe ten minutes at most. Already they'd passed a few beggars or random street walkers, and kept moving past them without taking the time to talk. They'd wasted enough of the precious resource. Already, what they spent was more than enough for everyone to steel themselves for what was coming ahead.

The entire group followed behind Ruby. Which the redhead couldn't help but think was particularly odd...

_'It's not like I have any idea where I'm going,' _the redhead mused, her melancholy still tainted with some anger. Ruby had noticed that her still seething rage, which was directed at a certain individual lagging behind them all at the back of the group, was causing her posture to go bad. As she led, Ruby slouched forward, almost as though the hateful thoughts in her brain were dragging her down.

Ruby suddenly jumped when a hand fell on her shoulder. A half second later, she relaxed. It wasn't Pyrrha, as the hand was obviously male. And Ruby knew she would have noticed Jaune slink forward. Which meant it could have only belonged to...

"You need to cool off a bit." Mercury's words were biting, wasting no time on pleasantries with the already fuming redhead.

She didn't slow down or turn to face him. Only raise her voice so that he could hear her voice in the dark night air. "Oh really? And why would I need to do that?"

Cocking a thumb back, Mercury hissed: "You shouldn't treat Jaune the way you just did back there."

"What?!" Ruby jerked her shoulder away, stepping forward a few extra stride and out of Mercury's reach. "You aren't going soft on me, are you? You of all people should sympathize with me treating him like a coward, especially after how they've been treating you for the past few weeks!"

Mercury could almost feel both Pyrrha and Jaune's eyes switch from Ruby to him. And he didn't care what they thought at that particular moment. Probably some sappy form of regret right about now...

"What I would do doesn't matter. But fact is, you're better than me... you shouldn't stoop to their levels..."

"They would let Nor-"

"No they wouldn't," Mercury interjected, cutting off Ruby mid-sentence. "They _were_ going to get Nora. They just wanted to play this a bit more on the careful side than we ever would have."

Ruby stiffened indignantly, her pace picking up unconscious. "So that makes them co-"

"It makes them careful, and that maybe what we need right now. I can remember a good three or four times back in our glory days where we would have all died on a training mission if we'd have listened to you and gone into the fray guns blazing. But we listened to Jaune, and more often than not, things turned out for the better..."

"That was when we were kids! Those rules don't apply anymore." Even though Ruby hissed those thoughts out, she could start to see Mercury's viewpoint as well.

Mercury sighed. "That's neither here nor there...just remember that your way isn't automatically the best way."

"Hmph." Ruby thought about it, her thoughts still whirling around in an angry storm of violent images and plans. But now there was a calm at the center, and Ruby listen do what Mercury said, for the most part.

"Jaune," Ruby asked without looking back, trying to sound more level, "where are we going?"

"The old crystal shop, 'Dust til Dawn'... that's where Pyrrha got attacked, that's probably where Nora would be." While Ruby couldn't see him, from just his voice Ruby could hear his relief at Ruby's dissipating anger.

"Alright then," Ruby huffed, turning down a long alley, remembering this part of the city clear enough. They weren't that far off. They'd probably be able to close the distance between them and the shop in less than five minutes.

"So... why didn't you let Weiss come?" Mercury's voice, even though it was hushed so that the odd beggar they passed on their way through the alleys wouldn't hear, echoed his skepticism clearly enough. "I mean, Ren I get, even if I personally thought the call was a bit stupid. But Weiss?" Mercury shook his head, and muttered: "What you said was total bullshit though."

Ruby thought about denying it. But she knew she wouldn't be convincing enough to fool Mercury. "Because," Ruby began, already feeling everyone one of the three following behind her listen in intently on her words. "Because I'm bringing Nora back tonight. If Weiss was here, I'd end up holding back..."

"Why wouldn't you...?"

The redhead leading their procession stopped for a second, one foot stuck hanging in the air. She looked back at the three following behind her, a sudden gap in the clouds above let the moonlight hit her face perfectly.

Mercury saw her eyes, and instantly regretted not siding with Jaune earlier. Not making Ruby sit all this out, or at least take a back seat to tonight's violence. He knew that this wasn't the right move. Jaune stiffened and stalled at the look on Ruby's face, and Pyrrha even took an unconscious step back.

Because Ruby's eyes had changed back to someone else's. They were hard, dark, and filled with unveiled, cold, murderous intent...

...They looked just like they had when Mercury first picked Ruby up off the ground, when Ruby first came too in that dark cave months ago.

"I'm bringing Nora back tonight," Ruby repeated. "No matter how many steps back I have to take, as long as I can keep Weiss from seeing them… well, they never really happened then."

Mercury didn't want to admit it, but he was legitimately afraid of the look in Ruby's eyes. He'd wholeheartedly believed that this Ruby had been left behind, abandoned dead somewhere to shrivel and die from neglect. "So... were you ever any better?"

"Course I was," Ruby snapped. "I was better, and I'll put myself back together and be better than I was today tomorrow." Sneering, the redhead circled a finger around her face. "I can take all this and lock it in a box, bury it deep, try to forget it... but I'll never be able to destroy it. I've come to terms to the fact that it'll always be festering away somewhere in me. Since it'll always be here, I might as well use it when I need my shadow."

"Why would you..." Pyrrha began to ask, looking visibly shaken. For even with her vocabulary, the look on Ruby's face was hard to describe. It was like the look of a madman... of a murderous psychopath, who wouldn't think twice about gutting someone that waked across their path during any old visit to town. The expression shouldn't belong to Ruby. The girl who was at one time the sweetest person she'd ever known.

"None of you ever believed us... and by the way, I'm glad you never did, you have no idea how amazing it was to see people who thought that I wasn't that bad... that I couldn't be evil." Ruby ran a hand through her hair, thinking for a moment on how to put this. As she turned away, looking forwards towards their destination, the wording Ruby was looking for hit her. "I'm trying hard to be more pure, more sincere. More like the old me... but tonight, while Nora needs help, she doesn't need that. She'll need blighted me. She'll… she'll need this," Ruby ended, gesturing with a free hand to her whole form.

"We, we don't need...," Jaune trailed off, at a loss for words.

"Let's just get Nora. And after that, do all your best to forget tonight. I will be..." Ruby started walking forward again, mumbling forward as she walked. If her words hadn't echoed off the smooth alley walls, everyone else would have missed them.

"Because unless Nora's handed over without a scratch carrying back a basket of roses in the crook of her arm... my hands'll be soaked in so much red before this is over..."

* * *

"Ren," Weiss called, also reaching out with an arm to the lanky man still leaning against the room's central pillar looking forlorn.

She ended up resting her hand on his shoulder and calling his name twice, before Weiss was able to finally break through the shell of Ren's thoughts.

"...Hmm?"

Weiss held out another hand, and put a pair of silver sheers into his hands. "Pyrrha said you were the one who cuts her hair right?"

Ren looked down, drawn out of his thoughts with this new confusion. "Where did you-"

"Drawer over in the corner," Weiss answered, trying her best to occupy Ren's attention. "So you cut Pyrrha's hair?"

"Uh... yeah, I d-" he tried saying, before Weiss cut him off again.

"Good, because I'm getting split ends and Ruby does a terrible job with styling hair." Weiss grabbed Ren by the wrist, and was already leading him to a stool across the hall and next to the fireplace. As she walked, Weiss reached back with her free hand and pulled the black band out of her hair, her held back ponytail opening up and splaying out across her back Hoping up onto the wooden seat, Weiss turned her back to Ren, leaving him looming over her shoulders and her pure white locks.

"Are you sure right now is-"

"Now is the perfect time for a haircut!" Weiss winced at her voice, coming out much louder than she had meant for it to.

For a few seconds, Ren stood there silently, brooding over Weiss. But in the end he sighed loudly, and pinched a finger around a smaller lock of hair and felt it out all the way to the end.

"And how long did you want it?"

"How long is it now?"

She felt Ren's fingertips trail all the way down Weiss's spin, not even noticing her shiver from his cold hands."…Around the top of the small of you back."

"So... shoulder blades then?"

Ren didn't say anything, although Weiss heard the sound of metal on metal as the man behind her snipped off a strand of hair.

Weiss winced as she imagined her long locks getting sliced off. Really, Weiss wouldn't ever take more than an inch off her iconic ponytail at a time. She'd kept her hair around the same length since she was fourteen. But as much as it pained her to lose the good six inches of straight hair, Weiss didn't want Ren, her friend, brooding over what must have been on his mind even more.

* * *

Standing around quietly, a back alley and two side streets away from Dust til Dawn, Ruby, Pyrrha and Mercury were silently waiting. Ruby had decided to humor Jaune, even though she was sure it wouldn't work. But he wanted to try and play peacekeeper... so Ruby took Mercury's earlier advice and let him.

And she wasn't surprised in the slightest when less than ten minutes after he left, they heard a tall figure work their way through the litter crowded back street back to them.

"Didn't work?" Ruby raised an eyebrow, watching as the figure who must have been Jaune approached them. There wasn't' much light in this alley, especially with the clouds overhead blocking up the fragments of moon, and all any of them could see were rough black outlines around the shapes of the other three. Still, the way he stumbled over every single piece of garbage in the small distance he had to cross left Ruby almost certain it was the lanky man.

"No, you were right, civil didn't work...," Jaune sighed, wringing his hands angrily as he walked towards them. "I offered the guy almost three weeks worth of ration tickets just to tell me if Nora was down there... guy waved in my face five weeks easy."

Just as he was almost a part of the circle, Jaune actually did trip over something, and fell towards the rough cracked cement alley floor. Landing with his hands underneath him, he broke his fall and protected his face. Although when he sat up, he hissed and held his hands out to the open air. While Ruby couldn't tell, it sounded like he'd skinned his hands pretty badly.

"Auhhh...," Jaune hissed, still staying quiet and keep the groups meeting secret from anyone who might have been nearby. On the ground, they could hear him blow on the torn up skin a few times, before he turned to look at the tallest figure in the lack of light. "Hey Mercury, would you mind..."

"Don't be such a baby," Mercury hissed. Crossing his arms, he made his position clear enough.

"So...," Ruby hummed, leaving her question in the air unasked, wondering in the back of her mind why Mercury sounded so crabby. Although, they were about to go into what would probably be a pretty heavy gunfight, so she realized that her being relaxed was actually more out of place.

Jaune sighed again, pushing himself off the ground and taking a spot standing next to his wife. "We are getting her back..."

Ruby nodded, although instead of pulling out a knife and getting ready for a fight like everybody else expected, the redhead started messing with the way her long locks hung instead.

"Ruby, um...," Mercury muttered, "I don't think that now is the time to redo you hair style."

The redhead continued running her hands through her hair though, pulling the locks in random, odd directions, forcing the strands of hair to stick up as though she'd spent a few rough nights sleeping out on the streets. "I mean, I still want to talk to him first... just in my way instead..."

"What make you think that they'll talk to you? All the guards seemed pretty hard core..." Jaune's conversation the light had been better out in the open, but even there, not by much. All he could tell was that even he, with his tall six foot six build, was dwarfed by the three walking walls out in front of the shop.

"Nah... They'll talk to me..." Unbuttoning her jacket so that it hung open, Ruby had started tugging at her clothes a bit, almost as though she was trying to get them to hang looser than they already did.

Pointing at Ruby's undershirt, her V-neck low to the point where they could see a clear and deep dip in her chest, more than enough to give any guy a nose bleed, Mercury coughed awkwardly and asked: "And why are you...?"

"Pyrrha," Ruby asked, ignoring Mercury and turning towards the woman. "Alright, I walk up to you and say I've been sleeping on the streets for weeks and I'm desperate. How bad do I look, one to ten?"

"Uh, well, with your hair and clothes like that..." Pyrrha muttered, not even questioning the redhead, already taking in the silhouette of the woman in front of her up and down. "...eightish...?"

Ruby nodded, and began walking out towards the same alley entrance that Jaune had slinked back to them through only a few moments before without waiting for another word. "Do me a favor guys and move down the hall a bit, so that you all aren't sticking out like a bunch of sore thumbs..."

* * *

The rest of the group had done as Ruby had said, and were standing around silently waiting for the redhead's return.

"We should-" Jaune began, stepping away from the wall he'd been leaning against. He only got the chance to lean forward a bit before Mercury, who was standing next to him, put his own arm out and pressed the blonde back into the wall.

"Shhhhh, give it a rest. Ruby told us to hide, I'm sure she didn't just run off and leave us hanging for a smoke and a drink," Mercury hummed, imagining Ruby off in some bar surrounded by wispy trails of smoke, throwing darts at a cork board. Somewhere out of his memories, he vaguely remembered her teetering and spilling brown liquor all over the floor of his favorite bar out a glass of whisky, laughing loudly on the day they became seniors. Her childish laughter only punctuated by drunken hiccups.

Just as Mercury finished that thought, remembering that day with a slight smile on his face, the entire group went silent as they heard the sound of approaching footsteps. Which was the part that threw every one of them off. Even after all these years, every one of them still had the polished senses of their training, and they could easily pick out the sounds of _two_ clicking boots making their way down the hall.

Weirdest of all, they all heard a tittering laugh from down the alley. It took them a few seconds to realize it was Ruby's, although the high and shallow giggles sounded nothing like the redhead they knew.

Mercury stood there, staring across the alley at Jaune, his jaw moving as he tried to say something. Although he wasn't sure what he'd question first. The three of them wheeled around the corner as they heard the two sets of steps approaching. And they were all surprised by what they saw.

Down the dark alley, already almost totally black in the night air, were _two_ figures. Although the moon cast enough glinting light that they could see the redhead's locks almost glow in the dim twilight, they couldn't see much else besides that. Standing right next to her was a hulking, massive figure, closer to seven feet tall than six. And even in the poor light they could see that Ruby was hanging off his arm, almost as though she was a prom date.

"Alrightly sweetheart, deals a deal. I'll ju-," the tall man, who'd been walking forward with his arm hooked out slightly for Ruby to hold onto, stuttered off suddenly. As he saw the three shadows step out from all the way down the hall, his dark, lumbering mass came to an abrupt halt. "Hey, you said we'd be going somewhere pri-!"

He didn't get any farther, when the girl hanging off his arm suddenly brought her boot up and then let it shoot out, straight at the middle of his leg. With the impact his knee bowed back, and as he lurched to the side he got about halfway through of a shriek of pain before the redhead grabbed a tuft of hair on the back of his head and swung his face into a wall. The sudden shock ended his yelling, and as his cry died in his throat, Ruby let go of him and let him fall to the floor.

"Quiet," Ruby growled pointlessly at the dead silent figure on the ground, wherever that sweetness had come from in her voice disappearing again.

_'He must be smart enough, he's keeping himself from making too much noise'._ If he hadn't kept quiet, Ruby knew herself enough to know that she would have probably cut her losses right there... and his throat too.

Still, he rolled over so that he was facing her, and glared death at the redhead over him. "You're a fucking psycho, bitch! You have no idea who you're messing wi-"

With the click of a button and a flick of the wrist, his threat was ended short as Ruby's dagger extended, and the point resting against the taught, thick skin of his throat. "Spare me the lecture, I'm sure you're tough and mean enough in your closed off little kiddy pool." Ruby leaned in then, her eyes wide and showcasing a bit of the night's unveiled madness. "But you aren't even a bench warmer in _my_ league. And believe me when I say I'd have no problem gutting you right here. That is, if you didn't have something I wanted..."

"A-a-alright, alright, I'll give you the five damn ration tickets, I'll just leave and totally forge-"

"Quiet!" Ruby leaned in closer, the cold steel of her knife pressed up against his Adam's apple. "Sorry for you, but I'm not some slut..."

Whether Ruby planed it or not, her point was only made further as she pressed the knife against his throat, and a small trickle of blood trailed down from where the blade rested against his skin.

"My colleagues and I need to know a few things. Make yourself useful to me... or I have no reason not to...," Ruby muttered, making her meaning more than clear enough as she slowly drifted her knife across his skin, causing more crimson ooze to tumble down his throat and pool at the neckline of his shirt.

'_Maybe that smart comment wasn't warranted,'_ Ruby thought to herself as she looked into her victim' s eyes. She could feel the others creeping up around her as she stared the man down. And while she did that, she didn't see even the tiniest hint of compliance in his eyes. No... the way his eyes were darting around, it was clear he thought he had some kind of chance, and was looking for a way out of all this...

His eyes flicked up over the redheads shoulder, and he looked at the three figures standing behind Ruby. And as he quickly took in each one, he suddenly got hung up on the tall, willowy figure standing over the redhead's right shoulder. A cloud had passed momentarily, and had shone a bit of moonlight down on the entire alleyway.

"You!"

Ruby watched him, noticing the weird mixture of fear and wonder spread across his face. "What, why ar-," Ruby started interrogating, before she heard a sudden stifled breath a half second after his outburst that answered her question. "Pyrrha, is he...?"

"Yes," Pyrrha answered, her voice strained and sounding somewhere between a whisper and a hiss. Even though Ruby couldn't see the redhead, she could imagine the warrior's raised shoulders and writhing fingers locked at her sides, just dying to strangle him.

"Hmph! Well then," Ruby started, pulling her knife away from his throat unexpectedly. The man on the ground looked up startled, until he saw the redhead's face above him, illuminated by a sudden gap in the clouds above that lit the alleyway brightly. He saw the twisted, maddened gleeful look on the redhead's face as she glared down at him.

"I won't have a reason to feel bad for this then!"

Before the man could even look scared, the bottom of Ruby's foot smashed into his face. Everyone heard the sound of his nose crunch under the tread of her heel.

Their interrogation had begun.

* * *

As Weiss sat on her barstool, she listened to the soft 'shink' noise of her hair getting shorter and shorter.

"You said you wanted it to the bottom of your shoulder blades?" Weiss could feel Ren pick out a small strand of hair, pulling on the white lock and seeing how long it ran. She felt his fingers slide off at the center of her back, in the small hollow between where the tips of her shoulder blades rested.

"Yeah...," she sighed, listening to the stress in the voice behind her. Weiss knew she didn't want it there. "You know, she will be okay..."

Ren didn't respond, although in the cold, quiet room his strained heart beat was more than loud to fill the silence. Weiss thought it was going to stay that way, until he did actually speak.

"Did... did you know we all voted once?"

Weiss perked up at that, although she kept her head level so Ren didn't slice off more hair and have to raise his cuts higher. "On what?"

A few more snips past, while Ren thought. After a long enough gap, he sighed and mumbled: "On letting you all stay..."

"Oh! I...I thought you all wanted us here." Weiss tried to hide her surprise, but it probably bled through. The way Ren had parted her hair, he could probably see the muscles in her neck tense up.

"We did." A few more shinks of metal passed. "But out on that road... well, after she fell we didn't really have time to talk..."

"Oh... Ruby." Weiss could understand a bit now.

"I thought she was just being surly because she smashed her head that first day." Ren stopped for a second, although Weiss couldn't tell if he was putting his scissors down or just checked his work. "But after a few days, we realized Ruby wasn't the old innocent sweetheart we'd been expecting anymore."

"Was she really that… intimidating?"

"Most of the time? No, she's just a bit surlier than in the past." Ren started cutting again, taking a few tiny snippets off the left side. "But every once in a while, I'd catch this... this glint in her eyes. I'll be honest, it freaked me out..."

"So," Weiss asked, squirming slightly in the chair, "you all called a vote?"

"Just me actually." Ren checked the length again on both sides, tugging lightly on the tips of Weiss's longest locks in the back. "We voted, a vote saying we wanted that person around. Four out of four for you. Three out of four for Ruby. And once Ruby was in, I saw no point to vote against Mercury, so it was only Pyrrha on that boat."

"So you actually wanted..." Weiss didn't know what to do with this knowledge. Or how to take it...

"I was worried about Nora... I, I was a bit... blinded, I'd say." Ren sighed heavily, and Weiss could almost hear how heavy his thoughts were on his mind. "I was wrong. Ruby is good. And no matter what happens, the second she walks through that door I'm going to apologize for my being wrong."

Weiss actually snorted at the thought. "You'll have to explain what for..."

Ren didn't say anything. Weiss just heard a few more 'shinks' behind her as he continued cutting.

* * *

Only a couple of minutes later, and they already had everything they needed. They knew Nora was inside. They knew she was locked in an old cellar with a half dozen other random women, and that the only key was on one of the storehouse's nine guards.

Ruby twisted her wrist, snapping it to the side sharply and scattered the specks of blood clinging to her knuckles across the alley floor. Without a shred of guilt, although Ruby knew she'd eventually feel it later, the redhead looked down on her handiwork...

They'd learned all that from the man propped up against the wall. Who was now in tears, cradling his mashed and broken face in his good hand, his other hanging at his side shattered. He hadn't had the chance to swell up yet, but he'd probably look like Pyrrha had in a few hours.

If they let him live that long.

"An eye for an eye..." Ruby began, sneering down at the groveling man below her. "I'd say you had this coming sooner or later..."

"Just... just please..." He seemed at a loss for words, his eyes shining brightly up at the redhead above him. Searching for some small speck of sympathy.

He found none. Ruby had seen Pyrrha before the majority of Mercury's healing had kicked in, and felt no shame in paying his man back in kind. "Well, thank you for everything...," Ruby began, realizing she didn't even know the name of the man she'd just tortured. A half second after that errant thought she just shrugged her shoulders. It would just be useless information, only weighing her thoughts down later. Ruby knew that she'd regret all this one day, but right now she was still wrapped up in her bloody and vicious thoughts.

"... Thank you, but you _have_ outlived your usefulness to me now..."

He looked up in horror at Ruby, and began stuttering in fear to the redheaded torturer above him. As he started talking, little specks of blood and spit dribbled down his face from his busted lips. "I-I-I-I I told you everything! You can't just k-kill me now, I did everything you-"

Cut off suddenly as the tip of a boot collided with his temple, the light went out of his eyes and he slumped to the ground.

Putting her foot back down, Ruby wondered for a second if that would be it. If it'd been that easy, if it hadn't really been a choice, but instead an accident... but even unconscious, the man on the ground still twitched from the pain he felt through his dreams. And now this would be hard.

Twirling the blade of her dagger through her fingers, as though it was a simple coin, Ruby thought about what she would do next. And in the end, she left it to the group. Without turning to the rest, the redhead left her question hanging in the air. "...Well?"

There was silence behind her, although she could hear the rustling of fabric as the three behind her shifted uncomfortably. The first voice, breaking the silence with anger and spite, was the one she'd already been betting on.

"Just kill him." But even with her harsh tone, there was a small hint of regret in Pyrrha's voice, tingeing her execution order somewhat hesitant.

A few seconds of quiet followed her words, until Jaune's voice picked up next. Ruby had also been expecting his response, disagreeing with his wife.

"We're better than them... we don't need him dead, so we shouldn't put him that way." But even with his declaration, there was still a hint of malice in his voice. It seemed as though running face to face with the man who had left his wife beaten on the side of the road had robbed him of his usual compassion. Ruby knew Jaune would be fine with his death, although he'd never wield the knife himself.

There was more silence, and it seemed as though the one say that Ruby actually cared about wasn't going to take a side. But he did, although Mercury's advice was the most ambiguous of all. His words gave her nothing, and all Ruby could feel were his coal black eyes boaring a hole in her back.

"You break the tie... just know that it'll be you wielding the knife, whichever way you choose."

Ruby was glad he'd said it that way. Because it let her test herself. And Ruby realized that even with all her proclamations of going back to the madness and bleakness of her hate... she'd changed. Deep down in her very core, she wasn't ever going to be _that Ruby _again.

Killing him... She would have done it before, a few months back. Slit his throat and let ruddy red flow free, laugh and revel in his pain as she watched the person below her in his final death throws as he lost this cruel game of life. And she'd done things like that before in the past too...

But as Ruby looked down at the figure slumped over at her feet, instead of blood lust or a thirst for vengeance, all she felt a crude sense of... of _revulsion_. A sort of cringe against the idea of killing him. Holding his fragile life in her hands, it wasn't that Ruby couldn't take his life and grind it to dust. She could.

But instead, it was that Ruby absolutely didn't want to.

Ruby's knife finally stopped spinning, and with a click the blade was drawn back in again. Ruby slipped the handle back into her jacket's inside lining, glad to have the cold metal out of her hands.

Turning back to the others, Ruby looked at her companions. Two were eyeing her grimly, both at different levels of both simultaneous relief and disappointment that she wasn't died absolute black. And Mercury only smiled at her with a relived grin, obvious even though his lips did nothing more than twitch slightly upwards at the corners.

Ruby walked out passed the other three, leaving her victim slumped against the alley wall. As she went, she thought hard with each strong step, mindlessly noting Pyrrha, Mercury and Jaune falling in line behind her.

_'So, I'm not an executioner at least...,'_ Ruby thought to herself, lost somewhere between anxious and content. 'I a_m a killer, it's a lie to say otherwise. Nobody here can say differently though, even white knight Jaune must have gotten his armor tarnished during all our days... But I'm not an executioner anymore... and that fact alone makes me no worse than anyone else here.'_

"So what now?" While Jaune asked it, Ruby knew everyone else was thinking the same thing. Even she was wondering.

Coming to the end of the alleyway, where she could see two more men ambling around the outside of the shop that held Nora, Ruby steeled herself again.

With a click, her dagger's blade was back out, and she said quietly: "...now... now is when we can't afford to show mercy."

* * *

Weiss heard a clink behind her, as metal was put down on glass.

"I'm done," Lie Ren muttered aimlessly, taking a step back from the smaller woman, letting her get up.

Weiss jumped off her stool, and without even checking the length of her hair she redid her ponytail, making sure it was in its off-centered knot as always. Really, Weiss didn't want to know, although she winced as she felt the fresh and stiff tips brush against the top of her back.

Turning around to thank Ren, Weiss spun on her heel only to find an empty space. It took her a half second to find him again, and when Weiss did she had to frown. He was back directly against the room's central pillar again, leaning against the column and staring at the closed heavy oak doors.

Taking long, slow steps, Weiss slowly walked over to him and decided to lean against the other side of the pillar. Out of his line of sight, Weiss sighed to him: "You know... they will be fine."

"... Why are you not worried?" Ren didn't sound bitter when he asked. He only sounded curious. "You let me cut your hair, even though you hated the idea, just to get my mind off Nora... but you have just as much to worry about as I do."

Weiss stood there for a moment, thinking. She bounced the tip of her boot against the ground, actually wondering about his question. Why wasn't she worried?

When the reason hit her, Weiss laughed to herself lightly. Ren actually leaned forward and looked around the barrier between them.

"I guess... I guess it's because I can't even... fathom a world without Ruby." Looking down at the floor, Weiss smiled at the thoughts on her own mind. "I don't ever have to worry about a life without her... Ever since we met back at Beacon, I think I've known that my life's story isn't about me."

Weiss smirked, and felt her eyes get a bit watery. "Ruby's the hero of my story. She _is_ a good person... and I've been a fool all this time."

She was about to say something else too. Something profound and full of meaning. Something that would change everything. But, just as she began to let those words fall off her tongue... a knock came at the door.

Both Weiss and Ren's heads snapped to the door, and watched the handle turned down and a hand slipped around the door's edge. Neither one of the two could breathe as they watched the heavy oak slowly open inward towards the hall.

The door opened to a gap just one person wide, and as the redhead had promised earlier in the night, Ruby stood hanging of the door frame, the fire lit hall illuminating her figure and making the night behind the woman black as obsidian glass.

Weiss sighed in relief, her heart starting to beat again. Ruby was fine... until she noticed the jacket Ruby had been wearing when she left was now tied around her waist, and a sock was tied around the top of her left arm. And while she had probably tried to clean herself up, there were obviously smudged trails of red streaking down Ruby's shoulder, all the way to the tips of her fingers.

Instead of any of that though, Ruby just raised an eyebrow at Weiss after she scanned the room and saw a small pile of white locks in the corner.

"You chose now to get a haircut?" The tips of Ruby's lips twitched as she locked eyes with Weiss, and the blonde woman couldn't help but smile back.

"Ruby, I, I just-" Ren started stuttering, trying to make good on his promise to Weiss. Somehow, that stupid oath was in the front of his mind, not the more pressing matter.

Ruby didn't pay him any attention, and only stepped in and to the right, out of the door way. And when he did, an orange blur shot into the room the second she left a gap.

The shape collided with Ren, and before he could even react, a head with ginger locks was pressed up against his chest. And a pair of arms wrapped around his back, pulling herself even tighter to him.

Ren didn't cry. But as Weiss watched the look on his face as he returned the hug to Nora, she almost did.

* * *

Walking down the short path to her destination, Ruby couldn't help but smile as the warm celebration lights disappeared behind her. They'd all got her back. Everything was finally right in the world. And after her one drink, which was already making her feel woozy, Ruby found her dark thoughts had been sealed away without any real trouble, even though she was still getting edgy looks from Pyrrha and Jaune.

When they'd gotten back, there had been a few moments where everyone let Nora and Ren have their silent moment. And startling them all, pulling herself out of Ren's embrace, Nora raised her voice and shouted: "The bottles are under the floorboards in our old dorm! I don't care what you all are doing, but I'm going!"

Nobody really drank much besides Nora herself, and her tolerance was so high that she'd have to down quite a few bottles to really get hammered. But everybody enjoyed a bit, if for no reason other than to smooth out their nerves. Everyone had had a stressful day.

Well, everybody except for one. Ruby hadn't noticed, but once they were all in the old Team JNPR dorm, the redhead realized that Mercury seemed to have just... vanished. Retracing her steps, Ruby walked down the stairs and into the main hall again. Nothing there either. The others had started walking down the stairs too, not following Ruby but just to get out of the cramped dorm.

But after a few minutes of searching around, Ruby found a folded note with her name on it, left on a low shelf near the door in a scribbly, hard to read cursive.

_Yo. Need to talk._

_Meet at gate._

_Trash talking._

_So Come Alone._

_~M.B._

It took Ruby a couple of seconds to remember that his last name was Black. And so that was why Ruby was walking down the gravel path to Beacon's main entrance. While she walked, the redhead thought about the last hour, and how dark it had been compared to the atmosphere she'd just walked out of.

_'I'll have to talk to them about all that happened down in that basement... explain that it wasn't me... but who am I kidding? I don't even know if that was me today... although I saved Nora's life down there, and stopped Jaune from losing his life, so maybe I should just leave it...'_

But even with those thoughts weighing on her mind, Ruby was still happier than she'd been in months. Nora, one of her few and best friends left in this broken world, was safe, and almost entirely unharmed. Hearing the gravel crunch under her feet, along with the pleasant chirping of the crickets in the early spring night air, Ruby couldn't help but feel as though her spirits were soaring.

She found him alright, right where his note said he'd be. From a distance Ruby could see Mercury leaning up against a large wooden crate, the 'this side up' logo on the wooden side obviously and comically pointing straight into the ground. He was looking out through the main gates, which were hanging slightly ajar, up at the moon past the rusted iron wrought bars. His silver hair was almost stark white under the night's glow. Closing the distance between them, Ruby still couldn't make out his face, pointed away and still hidden in shadows.

"Hey, what did you need to wait all the way out here for?" Chuckling to herself, Ruby called: "You know, we _do_ have rooms inside of the building, we can always meet there... Anyways, come on back, we've got stuff to do! Celebrations to attend! Nora's decided to just give up her entire stash, and I'm guessing you've got a few good parlor tricks up your sleeve."

"...Should you all really be drinking right now? I mean, I know we've got reason to celebrate, but I don't think it's a good idea to get hammered after what we just did. Hopefully not, but there probably are quite a few angry killers out there looking for us tonight..."

Ruby shrugged her shoulders, finally getting up to Mercury. Seeing his face, Ruby could easily see that he was feeling down. "Well, I know Weiss isn't touching the stuff, and I don't think anybody is getting hammered tonight."

"Hm..."

"So then... '_trash talking_'?" Ruby raised an eyebrow at the gloomy man, wondering what he was down about. "You have an issue with somebody? ... and also, on a side tangent, you left that note where anybody else could have easily read it, you're lucky it was me who-"

"I don't have any problems," Mercury sighed, so lost in thought he didn't realize he cut Ruby off. Looking up, he massaged the back of his neck, clearly showing his stress. "I just really didn't want to hang out, and I wanted to say something that would get you to not bring the rest along."

"Ugh! Alright, maybe you _do_ need to get drunk!" Reaching out and pushing against his arm, Ruby shoved off the man and started walking again. "Come on, we can talk while we go back!"

Mercury turned towards Ruby, and out of the shadows he mumbled sadly: "Sorry, but I'm not. I... I think my show's up..."

Ruby wasn't expecting that voice, and it brought her euphoria crashing to the floor. "Wait, what? I-is something wrong Mercury?"

"No, no... Really, I've been thinking about this for a while now," he obviously lied. Standing silent for a moment, Mercury looked off again angrily. He refused to meet the redhead's eyes. "I mean...It's not like I'm gonna be of any use to you guys out here anymore. Earlier we had bigger problems and I didn't want to mention it..."

"Mercury, just get it off your chest, this isn't like you..." Ruby mumbled, worried for the old enemy, and now her closest friend.

"...Ah fuck it, I'm out of aura…," Mercury sighed, swinging his leg and kicking at a rock on top of the cracked pavement. The stone made a loud pang as it collided with the fence. "It's why I haven't been healing anybody today... why you're still walking around with a stab wound."

"Wait, what does that ha-"

"Well, I'm not out-out yet," Mercury corrected, "but I feel like I'm close enough to it to say I'm empty... Fixing Pyrrha's stupid face took a lot out me…"

"Mercury, it doesn't matter! Yes, it's inconvenient that you can't heal. It's inconvenient that Weiss can't make ruins, that Ren can't create shields, that I can't disappear in the blink of an eye... but that doesn't matter nowada-!"

"I feel tired," Mercury stated, cutting Ruby off again. Looking down at his hands, Mercury kept flexing his fingers over and over, obviously lost in his thoughts. "I mean, I guess its fair... It's like I've just been playing a game for the past eight years, and I'm the only character allowed to heal. I had to lose that advantage and start playing on equal footing sooner or later, right?"

If Ruby's happiness had crashed to the floor, his next line buried it six feet deep into a grave.

"I've wanted to see if I can take care of myself for a while... Not die off while I'm on my... on my own..." As he talked, he seemed to start choking up. He wouldn't look Ruby in the eyes either, staring up at the shattered moon above him and the redhead.

"Like that matters Mercury! Come back! We need you, powers or not!"

"Nah Ruby," Mercury sighed. "You proved tonight that you don't need me. You'll always be fine. You have me convinced."

"Mercury, I-I," Ruby stuttered, looking lost for words. "Mercury, I don't _want_ you to go!"

She couldn't tell, it was only there for a second, but Ruby would have sworn a conflicted flash of anguish darted across his face. But a second later, it was replaced by Mercury's usual grin. Ruby had never realized until now how hollow it's always been.

"Sorry Red, but I don't really like the atmosphere here anymore... Everyone's made it perfectly clear they don't want me around…"

"First off," Ruby started, her voice sounding frantic," that is not true. And even if it was, who gives a shit?! They owe you! For healing me, for fixing up Pyrrha, for getting back Nora... We all owe you so much!"

Mercury leaned down, reaching behind the crate he'd been sitting on. And out from behind it, he swung out his old pack again.

Just like the first day she'd been with him, always two steps ahead of the curve. "I... I'm gonna go."

"No!" Ruby stood there stunned, unable to comprehend all this. How could everything fall apart so fast? "You'll die out there on your own!"

"Pftt! Sheesh Red, have some faith! I'm sure I'll be fine..."

Ruby just stood staring wide eyed at him. She couldn't understand what was happening. Even at her speed, she wasn't fast enough for this.

Before Ruby knew she was doing, her body took a step forward and her good arm swung at him, her hand already a fist. _'I'm not good with words... I'll make Weiss convince him... or Nora, or Jaune, or even Pyrrha will now.' _Ruby didn't even know what her plan was after the swing. Maybe knock him out and drag him back, let the others make him stay.

But he took a step forward too, and before Ruby knew what was happening, Mercury had swatted her hand down and his arms had wrapped around her in a soft embrace, gingerly on her left side. "Weak sure, but I'm still a huntsman right now... a measly girl couldn't get the drop on me, not even the best of them like you..."

Her head barely peeked out over his shoulder, and Ruby just stood there silently, still and unable to get past her thoughts. Her eyes stung and her chest felt hollow. Ruby had to keep blinking furiously for some reason as she looked out over his shoulder.

"Sorry Red... Sorry...," Mercury faded off, unsure of what to say as he held Ruby, absently noting how warm she felt, either that or how cold he was.

"D-don't... you d-don't get to say sorry when you're the one making this choice."

"Hmph, good. That's what I wanted. I want hell's fury, not tears and whimpers."

"Shut up," Ruby growled angrily, her eyes getting watery and sappy even after what he'd said.

"Hmmm... Hey Red," Mercury hummed, squeezing her softly as he talked; "do you know the funny thing about hyenas?"

"S-shut up," Ruby choked out again, her voice breaking in that tiny sentence.

He didn't listen. "You know, everybody thinks hyenas are dogs. They look like dogs, don't they?" Mercury stopped for a second, and when the girl in his arms stayed silent, he kept talking. "But actually, they're more like lions. So like wild cats. Which is weird to me... anyways, hunters are always called tamed wolves right? We used to call you shackled, but same idea really... anyway, wolves and hyenas, they'd never ever mix in the wild. Unless things get super messed up and weird, they don't even cross each other's territory... what I'm trying to say is-"

"A-are you using the excuse that cats and dogs don't mix?" Ruby finished his thought for him, her voice coming out husky and thick.

Mercury nodded. "Hunters are wolves. I'm a hyena. They may look the part, even if they're ugly... but they aren't dogs... just like me. I won't belong here. Not now, not ever."

Mercury was surprised himself, when he suddenly felt a pair of arms wrap around him tightly. Looking down, he saw Ruby had dropped the stiffness, although he she still wouldn't let any tears spill over. He was glad, it would make all this easier...

"...No...," was all she could manage.

"Hmmm... you know... you could come with," Mercury mumbled jokingly, already knowing without a doubt Ruby's answer. He still heard the redhead's breathe catch in her chest though.

"I... I thought you said that cats and wolves don't mix?" Ruby's mind was already racing, trying to catch up with what Mercury was saying.

"No, they don't... but I wouldn't say you were ever a wolf. Especially after what I saw today. Wolves don't wear masks…" Smirking to himself, looking up at the sky above him and trying to commit this moment to memory, Mercury replied: "Even when we were both at the academy, you've never really been one of them... I'd say you were always a jackal. You've still got a tiny bit of our darkness in you, even if you try to bury it deep."

Ruby's face tilted up, looking at him with wide eyes. Almost child's eyes. "You're part of the Wolf family, sure. But you do also share hunting grounds with us hyenas too..."

Ruby dwelled on what he said. Part of her wanted to say no. Part of her wanted to say yes. Part of her wanted to rush back and grab Weiss, screw everyone else and leave tonight. Part of her still wanted to fight Mercury and drag him back.

And the biggest part of her wanted to scream up at the night sky, to cry and wail over how unfair all of this was.

Mercury chuckled, breathing down into Ruby's hair. It worried him how much Ruby was thinking about what he'd said. "Goodbye Ruby." Pulling away, feeling the arms around his waist fight him for a moment before they loosened, Mercury stepped back. "You're wrong you know... when you say you can never throw it away. You'll only have that darkness in you as long as you cling on and keep it there..."

"Mercury," Ruby choked out, standing right where he'd left her, looking lonely and dejected under a dead streetlamp. "Please, don't-"

"Go back. Patch things up with Weiss. Keep her here, keep her safe. The fact that you two still have each other is a miracle... and not all of us got that. Don't waste it another day..."

Starting to turn away, Mercury started blinking rapidly as he joked. "So don't worry about me. I'll be fine, I definitely don't want to see my Mrs. Black any time soon... I know I'm already grey, but Emerald would kick my ass if I showed up and wasn't already wrinkly too."

And with those parting words, Mercury straightened himself out, pushed past the gate and onto the open road. It was maybe a twenty foot walk before he'd round the corner and make it out of sight. And the entire way he fought himself. He fought looking back, he didn't want to test his resolve.

And just like that, so abruptly... Mercury was gone.

Ruby just stood there, slumped against the crate that Mercury had just been leaning on. Trying to comprehend what had just happened. She'd never even asked about Emerald once... she'd never even thought...

A part of her knew he was gone forever. But another, smaller part was still hoping that Mercury would lean back around the corner in a second, and flash Ruby a goofy grin that easily read 'jokes on you, how could you think I'd leave?!'

But the night stayed quiet.

In an hour, she'd return to the party. The redhead would show up to the main gate, clear eyed and sharp. She'd calmly tell everyone they'd lost a good ally and a great comrade.

But right now... Ruby couldn't help it. She cried. She finally let the tears really spill over and fall down her face. Weeping bitterly as her best friend, who'd she only even known as a friend for a short time, walked out of her life forever.

She'd lied to Weiss again. Earlier today, when Ruby had made her a promise.

Ruby was wrong. They didn't all make it back tonight...

* * *

**Hey, so just an author's note. It's been a while, so I've got a lot to say this time. Nothing story related, so feel free to skip...**

**First off, I'm really sorry I've been gone for so long. I was dealing with some of my own issues, and once I got off my usual schedule, it was a bit too easy to walk away from the site completely and just go 'wait til next week... wait another week... nah, don't post it yet, you should go do something else...' Really I've been sitting on a mostly completed story for the past three weeks, just kind of fighting with myself on posting it. I know pretty much everybody knows this already, but I'll say it again. If you write, draw, or do some kind of skill based hobby, never just stop for no reason. Because once you do, it's really fucking hard to get going again.**

**I mean, it wasn't like I was just twiddling my thumbs doing nothing. Mostly I just wrote one shots and poetry scraps, more for myself than for anybody else. But it definitely was not that productive of a way to spend my time. Out of the seven, I may post one or two of them, I may not, I'm not too sure yet. I don't really feel like cleaning the stories up or doing any detailing. For the most part they were just pointless, directionless one-shots really...**

**But enough about me. About the chapter.**

**This chapter was really scary to write. And I hope you all enjoy it. But... it wasn't easy for me to write in the slightest. Remember last chapter when I said there was something special about this one? Well, now that I think about it, it's not that big of a thing...**

**This was the first chapter for Remnants I ever actually wrote, almost five months back. This chapter was just a thrown together scrap that turned into what I consider to be a pretty decent story. Now, when I first wrote this chapter, it was only three thousandish words, had a totally different plot, and the characters were all either drastically different or totally absent. I liked the chapter so much I had to figure out how to get from somewhere to here. Everything beforehand had kind of led to this point for me... funny how things sometimes just work out, huh? It was still really tough though. Now I'm looking forward to getting to the next big milestone.**

**Side note, is it weird that I delete authors notes? I only keep around the most recent chapters, and then get rid of the last one...**

**Anyways, ****I'm going to be sticking to my old schedule like glue, because fact of the matter is I won't improve without practice. So, new chapter will be coming in about two weeks (although there may be a tiny chapter that gets posted in between this and the next), unless both an atom bomb drops and hell freezes over.**

**So see you all around! It's good to be back, I've got a bunch to catch up on! Stick around if you want more, and know I'd always love to chat if you're interested!**

**P.S. And also, a good friend of mine LegacyHunter on Deviant art and LegacyHunter23 on the site made the new cover. Which is just as badass as the last cover (courtesy of him as well!). So you should go check him out too!**


	17. Small Moves With Giant Consequences

If someone had looked up at that dark night sky, at the black wisps covering the world's roof, they might have noticed celebration lights in the distance.

Off in that forgotten corner of the city, they might have investigated and found a mixed celebration and mourning on the old campus. Heard the clinks of glasses and the soft thumps of ambling feet around a bright lit room. Soft laughter as friends all smiled together, knowing and not caring that their home's bright atmosphere wouldn't last forever, and that their world's darkness would soon engulf them again.

They would have peered in through the windows, and watched as six friends all watched each other, not wanting to end the night. Or... five out of the six. There was one, staring down into her barely touched glass, not paying the slightest attention to it all. If the intruder was desperate enough they could press their ear to the cracked and scuffed glass, listened to the shaky voice of one single celebrator, who even with all her best efforts wasn't doing a great of job fooling anyone. She was black, a funeral attendee who'd somehow found themselves in a circle of celebrating friends.

But lucky for the ones inside, whether they were happy or not, they were alone. No one was nearby, no one stalked them, no one wanted them dead.

...Yet.

* * *

On the other side of town, walking through the streets with his head held high, a single man crisscrossed through Beacon's alleyways. Standing tall, he stared down his path, squaring his shoulders as he closed in on his destination. Doing his best to catch his breath and slow down his heart beat, he eased up on his pace and slowly meandered the rest of the distance. The messenger who'd been sent to warn him, just a kid no older than seventeen who'd been quaking in his boots as he stuttered out his simple report had been left behind, probably lost in some back alley somewhere on one of his quick turns. The receiver of the message had sprinted off here, inadvertently shaking the young teenager.

_'Good,'_ the man thought to himself, straightening his black leather duster as walked forward. He could already see the old dust shop, and the broken in door hanging ominously on only one hinge inside the frame. That kid, whose name was escaping the cloaked man as he shook out his sandy blonde hair, was young and innocent. After meeting him a few times, and how indescribably good the youth was, the man knew the child shouldn't see this. The world _was_ brutal and he'd probably seen worse... but maybe, he hoped, the kid just hadn't seen enough.

That concern inside of him, for a simple kid who wasn't anything more than a stranger really, was fading. He was going gray, and it wasn't his hair's shade that was shifting. His soul, while he was entirely unaware of the change, had really started resonating with another's. They were on two opposite paths. They were different in look and sound, yet he and the mourning girl were also the same. They both were in the same dark place tonight, and they were both trying best they could to wear masks for those around them.

But, while her scars were just starting to fade, and were becoming invisible to not only everyone else but herself as well... he'd just been inflicted with his own tonight. They were going to be fresh, painful... he'd want to inflict scars of his own, share his own pain, ease his by spreading the agony around.

Fate had set him on a path, almost parallel to that other girl, who was more like him than either would have admitted. And neither of them could know that those paths would slowly come closer and closer together, intertwine... and eventually collide.

Closing the distance he rushed in through the door, the gust of air following him causing the split door to sway slightly in his wake. Into the shop, around the scuffed up countertop's corner, and towards the back. As he passed one of the aisles, out of the corner of his eye he noted a few men circled around another, who looked completely and totally destroyed. His face was red and bloodied, and the medic tending to him had tied his arm to his torso in white gauze, immobilizing the limb completely.

He weaved through the shop, and passed through a back door that led to a stair case. As he stepped through the door frame, he felt somebody follow behind. But the man paid no attention to the presence. Listening to the short, choked breathes that simply screamed obesity, he'd been expecting this one to talk.

To apologize and grovel at his feet... beg to not be killed in retribution for the night's toll.

Ignoring the man behind him, he taller man cast his thoughts out to someone else. 'So..._ this is how it ended for you, huh? I told you this was a bad idea, that these were vial, evil people... but you wouldn't listen. And you were right about one thing. They did pay well...'_

A single light behind him illuminated his path. The tall flame of a lone candle that had been carried out of the shop by the man following him. Walking down a flight of steps, hearing every wooden board underneath his boots creak viciously under his light weight, the man in front let his hand drag across the wall as he made his way into the cellar. Pulling it away, he rubbed his fingers together and ground the dust clinging to his fingers to even finer powder.

"So what happened yesterday?" As he made his way down the staircase, he could hear the sound of even heavier footsteps creaking their way down behind him.

"I don't know, I still don't know!" The harsh, raspy voice echoed forward off the slick cold walls of the staircase leading down to the storage basement. Even though he came out sounding strong, there was no way to hide the wariness in his voice. It rang clear like a bell.

"Nobody saw anything! Only one of my boys made it, and he's still sittin in a corner with stars circle'n his head, staring round dumb as a brick." As an afterthought the voice added bitterly: "Never was much good for anything else though..."

Stopping on a step, halfway down, he couldn't help but turn back and glare at the portly man behind him. Even though he was three steps below the other man, they both were at the same eye level here.

"Snips, you don't sound too upset." Raising an eyebrow, looking the short, balding, fat gangster up and down, he asked: "you lost seven men, and it looks like one was beaten to the point that he's not gonna be doing much any time soon. And on top of all that, you seem fine telling me that all you know is that you _still don't know_?"

Glaring at the taller man, Snips barked: "Boy, just because you're tough doesn't mean you get to speak like you're on my level!"

Quickly stepping back twice, so that he was only one step right before Snips, the front man now glared down on him. "You're right, I'm not on your level. Fat lazy middlemen like you don't get your hands dirty." Leaning in so that there was less than an inch between him and the gangster, he growled in a voice that made the hardened criminal go pale as a sheet. "In case you're too dense... you just told me my best friend for over a decade is now dead. I'm around an inch away from stringing you up like the pig you are."

Leaning in a couple more inches, making Snips nearly fall back on the stairs behind him, the man sneered his last thought, making sure he was clear enough.

"Do. Not. Test. Me. Today."

Looking pale as a sheet, nearly shaking out of his boots, Snips stuttered out: "Alright, alright, sorry, sorry."

"Hmph!" Whirling around, not caring as he felt one of the hanging tassels on his overcoat swung and pelted Snips on the face, he continued his way down the steps. "Alright then... what have you done in the past few days?"

Following behind, waddling down the steps with his pride bruised, Snips muttered meekly: "Nothing really..."

"You're always doing something shady Snips! Think, anybody you'd have pissed off!"

Finally at the bottom of the staircase, the two finally got to take in the carnage of the cellar.

It was a gruesome sight, blood everywhere. Splattered across the walls, speckling the ceiling... leaking out onto the floor. There were dead bodies lying in corners and slumped up against walls. Riddled with bullet holes and knife wounds. Most hadn't drawn their weapons, and the few firearms and knives that weren't holstered looked clean or unfired.

His storm gray eyes scanning the room, the tall man thought to himself out loud. "Whoever did this wasn't looking for a surrender, they were here to kill..."

Turning back to Snips, he saw the gangster had pulled out a handkerchief, and was dabbing at a bit of sweat that had beaded up on his forehead. After he finished wiping up his greasy face, he pulled a cigar out of his jacket pocket, and sliced off the end, a quarter inch of brown cork flying through the air. "I don't... well, we haven't done anything recent. No pushing out territory, no real power plays... it's actually been a pretty boring month."

"Snips! Whatever did this, it was for a specific reason! Whatever you did, it was an _event_ that had this as the immediate reaction!" Turning around and glaring at the piggish man, he shouted: "Think!"

"...we didn't do anything." Scratching the bald spot on the top of his head, the look on Snips face made it seem like he was going over a checklist in his mind. He pulled out a small match book, wasting the resource on such a stupid addiction as he lit the tobacco he'd been chewing on. "... uh, we made an arms trade, exchanged some rations, grabbed a few girls, stole a ba-"

"Who?"

"Who what?" Snips squirmed under the steely eyes of the man watching him, a few ashes falling off the cigar in his mouth.

Sighing loudly, the man in front of snips was obviously running out of patience. "Who did you grab? ...And the hell are you harassing people for?! Don't we all have enough problems?!"

"The, the usual..." Snips mumbled meekly, trying to glaze over the topic he knew wouldn't go well.

It was well that he did squirm. The man in front of him twitched, for a half second beginning to reach into a pocket and pull out a tool to end the mobster. But a moment later, he relaxed. _'I need his whole story_..._Then I can decide what to do with him...'_

A large portion of his conscious hated that he let the man in front of him live. It used to be his job to bring these types of people in. Snips wasn't just a backstreet gangster. He wasn't just some drug dealer and weapon broker.

Snips, and his tight knit group of cadets, was a human trafficker.

_'Evil fucker...,' _he thought to himself, trying to keep himself from slicing up the man right there. Even in this rotten of a world, people like Snips could still make a profit... really, he would have loved to kill the man right then. But if it hadn't been for how well Snips paid and how desperate they'd been, he and his partner would have probably gutted Snips the day they met him. "Who did you take?"

"Uh... I know there were seven women, uh...?"

"Didn't you say you had an old camera?" Watching Snips nod, he snapped his knuckles and replied: "I'm assuming you took pictures... you've gotta show them around before you can sell..."

Snips's eyes widened, and he started nodding, the fat under his chin jiggling with the motion. "Yeah, somewhere there aughta be-"

"Good, go look. Maybe I'll see somebody who'll make me get all this." Waiting for a second, he then asked: "Now, where is...?"

"Over in that corner," Snips muttered dismissively, already lost in thought as he walked over to a desk piled high with papers.

Snips turned way, and the man now standing alone in the middle of the bloodshed breathed in once quietly, before turning to where the fat man had pointed. Walking the distance, he could already see feet pointing out before he could see the rest of his friend.

"...oh buddy," he sighed, just as he rounded a stack of boxes and found his old pal. Tall and lanky, propped up against a wall exactly how he'd probably fallen. Whoever had attacked him was probably big and fast, able to get past his quick friend before he could defend himself. His pistol was still in his holster, and he looked mostly peaceful. He could have been sleeping...

Except for the dagger shoved deep into his right eye.

Reaching out slowly, gripping the handle gingerly, he put a hand lightly on his friend's face and pulled. The dagger slid out clean enough, and when the blade was entirely out, his friend's eyelids closed easily, hiding the damage well.

"W-well man," he stuttered, silently noting how shaky his voice was coming out, "at least you don't have to worry about your hair thinning anymore…"

Lost in thought, he didn't notice as Snips came up behind him. "Ahem." Nudging the crouched down man in the back of the arm, he held out a stack of a few old Polaroids. "These are all the girls from last night..."

Reaching out, making sure to not say anything until he knew his voice was no longer quivering, he took the squares in one hand while still holding the dagger with the other. Sliding the pictures like playing cards, he looked through the stack absentmindedly. The colors were bleary and bland, and everything tinted somewhat brown. The first woman, who was pretty enough, just looked… plain. She just looked like an average, normal survivor.

_'Nope, average girl. Nope, another plain one.'_ As he cycled through the pictures, he thought "_although really, any one of these girls could have had somebody who would kill for them... really, I'm just hoping to recognize one..._

Coughing to get his attention, looking over the crouched man's shoulders, Snips asked: "Are you looking for anything in particular?"

Pausing over the third, not taking his eyes off the photo, he asked: "Would your men take off nice clothes or jewelry before they take these? Most women wear something if they're being looked out for, show that they aren't just open market..." Wincing, he hated the way his words were coming out. They made him sound like one of Snips's lot. Looking through these photos, imagining all the girls that had been abducted and sent god knows where by Snips, he was getting closer and closer to actually killing the man behind him.

"Usually I tell the boys not to... but they don't listen..." The sound of a pad of paper being turned over came from Snips, and after a second he mumbled: "Danny, the... well, the dead one in the red coat over there, left me a note from today. Reads:

'one got way, but blow she took, probably not sell worth.

probably didn't get far, sent Mickey out, search nearby.

no dice, but will keep eye out

be fun to just have around'

After reading that, Snips looked up from the scribbles and said: "Maybe it was this chick then? Maybe it wasn't that we took their girl, maybe all this was retaliation for messing up this one broad here?"

"Hm, could be..." Although he didn't really hold his breath as he continued looking through the pictures. A girl who got away probably wouldn't invoke this kind of wrath.

_Nope, nope, nope, no-' _his thoughts came to a halt on the sixth picture. He groaned the second he saw her.

He recognized her alright. Orange hair, short, pretty teal eyes. He smirked slightly at the photo, at how she was being held in place of the photo with one man on each arm, a third holding her head straight towards the camera. And even then, she was still pretty blurry, the look of hell's wrath barely visible on her face. _'Probably took a few takes...'_

Turning the stack back at Snips, showing the pig the picture on top, he muttered: "She is who all this is about."

Leaning in, Snips stared at the photo for a second. "Pretty, I guess... what's the big deal?"

"That, you stupid fucking idiot," the man muttered, turning the dagger still covered with his friend's blood over and over in his hands, "is who this was all about."

"What, this chick? I don't even recogni-"

"That, my fucking stupid employer… would be Nora Valkyrie." Standing up at his full height, the blonde man turned back and glared at Snips, holding the blade that had ended his friend's life by the cold, sharp edged steel end.

"The... the border guard?!" Snips' eyes were wide, and obviously rattled. He knew what messing with her meant. He could already imagine the wrath harming her would bring down…

"Mm-hm." Flipping the dagger over in his hand so he was holding it like a proper blade, he noted how strange it felt. _'Feels more like a sword...' _Squeezing the sculpted metal and leather, something gave on the other side of the grip under his ring finger. And with a cold click sound, the knife's blade disappeared down into the handle. Turning it over, he found a golden 'B' engraved into a small button right where his thumb would have been. "Neat dagger..."

Turning back to his friend, who looked peaceful, the man who should have been raging against the world for some reason seemed to be unnaturally calm. _'It was probably Ren, that or Pyrrha. Considering he didn't get a chance to even fight back, probably Pyrrha. Even good ol stone silent Ren would have probably been a raging madman with Nora down here.'_

_Looking down _on his old friend with a twisted smirk, feeling somewhere between crushed by depression and lost without direction, he thought: '_Whoever it was, they probably didn't even recognize him... just because we're in the same town, doesn't mean we ever ran into each other. It's been a decade, and chances are in the chaos they didn't take the time to look...'_

Taking it all in, he thought: '_Probably wouldn't recognize him without the blue hair dye...'_

Breaking the tenuous silence, the fat man stuttered out a small grunt. "Uh, Sun?" Snips' voice was quivering again, the gangster sounding more like a scared school girl than the monster he was supposed to be.

"What?!"

Balking, Snip's stuttered: "Y-your tail, it's getting dragged through t-the..."

Without looking, Sun flexed the extra appendage, noticing there was a bit about a third of the way towards the tip that felt stiffer than his fur usually felt. Somewhat matted, a bit sticky...

"I'm not worried about a little blood..." Sun muttered, still sitting there crouched by his friend, his tail resting in the puddle of blood. Under his breath, the man behind him caught a tiny phrase, something like: "...much, much more..."

He stood up, running a hand through his tan hair, and turned back towards Snips. Sun just stood their silently, gazing at Snips with the oddest look on his face. Like the cogs were turning, but there was something in there too that was making the teeth just not align quite right.

Shifting from foot to foot under the steel gray gaze, he asked: "So, I mean... I've heard your story, know you were friends with that bunch before everything fell to shit. Are you gonna... will you...?"

"...Everyone," Sun started, staring down at the knife in his hand, "who had a part in his death is going to pay..."

"…well then, good luck." Snips started backing away, and a shaky grin came up on his face. "I'm not suicidal, and more than anything else I'm hoping they don't decide to hunt the rest of us down. I'm down by half my men."

Snips laughed, not realizing the weight of what he said. "Gotta think about surviving. I've made too many enemies; more than a few would take the chance to bash my head in if they could!" He started turning away, although he then turned back and gave sun a cruel smile.

"And sorry about your little pal by the way. I'll send my regards, whatever you decide to do…"

Sun took a step closer, and looked down at Snips with beady eyes. With madman's eyes. "My little _pal_?! You know, he was my best friend... way back before all this, way back before I was even a hunter. Since we were children"

Snips was a fool. A fool whose only company had been murderers and psychos for too long, even before the fall. And because of that, he couldn't feel what anyone else would. He'd crossed the line. That the man standing in front of him had just snapped, and made a grizzly decision.

What he did catch, he was not fast enough for. It didn't dawn on him until a fist had grabbed at the hair on top of his head, yanking the wispy little strands of comb over up, that the most dangerous person to him in his life was standing less than two feet away

Not until a razor sharp line of steel was already half way through the skin, muscle and blubber of his neck.

It wasn't even a tenth of a second before the deed was done. When the dagger finished its path a spray of blood shot out, splattering Sun's chest with spacklings of crimson. He let go of Snips' hair, let the man fall to the floor.

Rolling around in his death throws, Snips' hand was clasped to the bulge of his neck. With one hand he tried to stopper the leaking, even though the wound was without a doubt fatal. And with his eyes bulging out, he tried scuttling back away from Sun across the floor.

His consciousness scrambling in terror, he felt a hand wrap itself around the wrist keeping him alive another few seconds. Suddenly, Sun was right in his face, leering down at him.

"I want you to know," Sun started, drawling the words as he slowly pried Snips' hand away from his throat, "that nobody is getting away with this. This is their fault, and I _will_ be going after them, this city be damned to the infected that'll make it through for all I care."

Sun leaned in even closer, his blood soaked tail now over his shoulder and dripping crimson nectar down onto the both of them. "But **_you_ **are just as much to blame as well! You'll die here in this shitty store room! And when I know your dead, I'll go up there and end every one of your goons and little gangsters as well. It was a mistake to not kill you all the second we met you."

"I'm not worried about a little blood" Sun sneered, watching as the light left the eyes of the pitiful fool below him, the growing pool of Snip's blood growing to consume and extinguish the cigar that had fallen on the ground next to them. "And I'm ready to spill much, much more..."

* * *

**This whole part, which was originally only a third of a chapter, didn't fit well with the update that was originally going to be coming out today. The tones were way too different, to go from this too… **

**Anyway, it also made more sense for this to come first and have it stew. Luckily I'm on spring break, so I'll just do a bit more polish and finish up the chapter, which is now a bit too short. But for the best, it'd be better if it was longer. I've been leading up to it for a while**

**Let me know what you think! I'd like to hear feedback, know if people are enjoying! Thanks for reading, and I'll see you soon!**


	18. Hole and Whole

"Ruuuuuuubyyyyyyyyyyyy..."

The instant she heard that voice... Ruby knew. The redhead hadn't heard Weiss ever speak in that tone, or the blonde hadn't in so long that Ruby couldn't recall a single time. Her voice was dreamy and echoing, long and drawn out, like a wicked ghost calling out in the night. The way Weiss's soft, singer's voice trailed off on the dangling 'y' sent shivers down Ruby's spine, chilling her to the core.

"Ruuuuuuuuuubyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy..."

Ruby knew she was trapped once again, in one of her few and far between dreams.

"Weiss!" Calling out for the blonde, Ruby looked around franticly. In the dream as she whipped around on the spot, the redhead noted how her limbs felt like they were weighing her down, heavy and stiff as lead. Slowly pirouetting, the redhead saw nothing around her that would lead to the presence of the shorter girl.

_'Damn, it's going to be one of those pointless search dreams again ...' _she grumbled to herself. After finding nothing in the surrounding landscape Ruby gave herself a brief glance. Oddly enough, the redhead's subconcious had put her in her old pajamas for some reason, the rose emblems one her white bottoms almost glowing pink in the soft light.

"Ruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuubyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy..."

If her hair wasn't tickling her back, just as long in the dream as it was in her waking hours, Ruby would have sworn her hair was standing on end. The goose bumps and shivers that were racing over her skin certainly made her feel that way.

She had some gut sense she was in a forest, although it was hard for her to tell, as the tree trunks surrounding her were almost entirely hidden behind thick rolling clouds of fog. It was bright, everything washed gray by the floating mist. The tranquil light seemed to come from nowhere and light everything equally, diffusing through the air and causing the edges of most shapes to almost waver in the limelight. Ruby noted absentmindedly that while everything was bright, nothing cast even the smallest shadow. Not the blades of grass, not the overhanging tree branches, not even Ruby's own two feet. It made everything look unsettling. Unnatural.

"Ruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuubyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy..."

Ruby wanted to go and look for Weiss, let this dream play itself out. But as she went to move forward, the redhead felt her feet suddenly adhere to the floor, cementing themselves in place and refusing to move.

"Ruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuubyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy..."

The itch to go search was getting unbearable, almost to the point where Ruby wondered if the unsettling urge would be enough to wake her. But at the same time, while she still tried to shake out of her footprints and move forward... a decent part of Ruby was glad that she couldn't move. There was something unsettling in Weiss's voice, a sort of chime, a sort of whisper underneath the call that somehow shoved the grim images of graves stones, hospital wards and dark things that went bump in the night to the forefront of the redhead's mind.

_'Screw this dream... last thing I needed, probably just alcohol...' _More than anything just wanting to wake up at this point, Ruby shook herself in the dream, hoping to jar her mind enough to end this foul nightmare. Looking down at the ground, Ruby rubbed at her face, squishing her cheeks between her palms and massaging her closed silver eyes with her fingertips. The redhead knew this usually did the trick, although right now it didn't' seem to be calling her back to reality. It was as if something was holding her in this drea-

"...Ruby."

At the quiet murmur, both clear and concise, Ruby's head snapped upward out of her hands. If she hadn't been stuck to the floor, the redhead would have probably jumped a few feet off the ground. Just out of sight directly in front of her, barely outlined in the fog, was the silhouette of what was probably her. She was standing just out of the clearing Ruby seemed to be in, a small circle of thick trunks that all reached up towards the sky, higher than the eye could see, getting lost in the thick grey above.

"Weiss," Ruby mumbled, even in her own dreams sounding somewhat rattled. "W-Weiss, what are you doing out here?" Trying to take a step forward, the redhead found she was still locked in place. For the most part, Ruby wanted to reach out, shield Weiss and keep her safe from whatever this nightmare was going to throw at them. Protect Weiss like she always had.

...Although, something about the way the figure in front of her, how the mirage seemed to twitch eerily at the sound of Ruby's voice, made the redhead almost glad she couldn't move too. A bit of her was glad that Weiss was over where she was, out of reach and nearly out of sight.

"...Ruby," Weiss's voice called out, closer to a ghost's moan than an actual person.

Her teeth were actually chattering now. "W-w-what?

"...Why do you have a hole in your heart?"

"Wha... Weiss, what do you-"

"Why do you have a hole in your heart Ruby?" Taking a step closer, yet still remaining just as blurry, Weiss's outline approached slowly. "Why do you have a hole in your heart?"

"I, Weiss, I don't know what you mean by-"

"Why Ruby? Why?" Weiss's outline was closer now, past the ring of trees surrounding Ruby. Yet she was still as blurry as before, a hazy figure in what was becoming an ever sharper environment. Every few seconds she'd come into focus, like a television set that had skimmed over its signal. Something about Weiss struck fear deep into the redhead, shaking her to the core.

Ruby would have been lying if she had said that she wasn't scared. What made all this worse was that this wasn't in line with her usual nightmare. Ruby could handle those dreams. But this horror story... the subject was off. Almost always, Ruby was under some form of attack, or found helpless in the shoes of Blake or Yang's death. But this time, it wasn't some imagined end scene. She'd never been here, never been somewhere this new.

Weiss had never been in one of her nightmares before.

Suddenly, the figure in front of Ruby came into sharp focus. And it was Weiss alright. As gorgeous as she was during the day, Ruby's subconscious had somehow captured that beauty and replayed that image tonight for her own torment instead.

But... she wasn't... quite right. Dressed in her old snow gear, Weiss's hands were clasped together in front of her, her fingers locked together and squeezing the space between them. But while the snow suit and the rest of her clothes were white, the rest of Weiss had turned ashen gray, faded like old pictures from decade old newspaper clippings. Her skin, nails, lips, eyes, all different values and shades of powdery granite. Even Weiss's stark white hair, usually radiant and glowing, was a shadow draping of matte silver strands. Tears were streaming down her face, glistening streaks of gray.

"Why Ruby?" Weiss's voice wasn't a ghostly coo any longer, but instead a choked breath, sounding almost on the verge of tears. "Why do you love the hole in your heart Ruby?" It tore Ruby's soul apart just to listen.

Weiss's hands both raise up, the greys of the blonde's knuckles stretched white, facing Ruby. Whether she hadn't noticed, or if her dream had blinded her so that she wouldn't have seen it there before... a pistol was in them now. A shiny one, immaculately clean, a six shot revolver. Without firing, the blonde tipped the barrel of the gun back, as though there was some kick to the revolver even without it even launching a shot. "Why did you let me put a hole in your heart Ruby?"

Ruby could suddenly feel temperature in the dream, although she wasn't sure if she couldn't beforehand. In the cool, pleasant dreamtime air, the redhead also felt trailing fingers of soft warmth flowing from the tip of her sternum down towards her naval. Placing a hand on the black tank top for a moment, Ruby pulled her palm away to see it soaked scarlet red. The blood was a bit too colorful, somewhat unrealistic, but still jarring enough to catch Ruby's breath.

"... And why is there now a hole in my heart now Ruby?"

Her feet suddenly started moving again, and before she knew it Ruby had staggered a few steps forward. "Weiss, Weiss I swear I would never hurt you."

Stumbling forward, her feet moving more of their own accord than Ruby actually ordering them, she teetered left and right as though she were a drunk. Ruby started closing the gap between them, slowly coming closer to Weiss. Scrutinizing the blonde as she moved, Ruby could see no blood on Weiss. She looked pristine, perfect, her angelically ashen face still streaming silver tears.

"Ruby... it hurts." Weiss's voice came out shaky and thick, sounding as though she was going through more pain than Ruby could ever imagine her bearing in real life.

"Where Weiss, where? I'll-"

Ruby had finally stumbled within arm's reach of Weiss. But looking her over again, Weiss seemed fine. Ruby's arms both hung limp at her side, one with a palm coated in blood. Her arms still felt heavy, and Ruby lacked the strength to raise them.

The blonde stopped Ruby from coming any closer, placing a hand on Ruby's chest, right over her own bleeding heart. "It-it hurts so much..." Weiss's fingers, over Ruby's heart, tensed up, squeezing in pain.

Her eyes widening in surprise, Ruby stuttered: "Weiss, it's... it's my wound, you shouldn't be-"

"I can't take this pain anymore..." Weiss's face tilted up, and her eye shined almost pure anguish back at the redhead. Ruby realized that Weiss' eyes still held some color in them. Among the gray, the usually icy pail eyes looked like liquid sapphires. "It hurts me every day."

Suddenly, Ruby was again locked in place. She couldn't move an inch. She couldn't even speak.

Weiss's hand fell off her chest, falling to the side and leaving a smear of red on her winter white snow jeans. Her other hand, shaky and agonizingly slow, rose up. Making the long journey upward until the pistol in Weiss's hand ended up pressed against her once creamy skinned temple, a few locks of hair pinned under the steel barrel.

"I'm sorry," Weiss choked, her eyes red and a few more tears leaking out the sides. The one's from her left eye followed down her scar and ran into her mouth, wetting her lips with salt. "But I can't take this."

There wasn't a bang this time either. But Weiss's knees went slack, and she crumpled like a building whose supports gave out. She hit the floor, the sound of a body dropping heavily, before Ruby screamed.

* * *

"WEISS!"

Sitting bolt upright in her bed, the cold moonlight from the night sky shining in through her bedroom window, Ruby woke up and found herself out of breath. Naked under the sheet, Ruby's hand scrambled against her chest. She felt her rib cage rise and fall frantically, her fingertips searching for any signs of wounds.

Wide eyed, still searching in a frenzy for something as her eyes darted wildly around the room, the redhead finally let her hand drop. _'Damn alcohol...'_

Rubbing at her eyes with the back of her arm, Ruby stopped when she suddenly felt a flash of cold against her cool, tawny skin. Felt how wet her cheeks had been. _'I was... I was crying in my sleep?'_

Swinging her legs so she was perched on the edge of her bed, Ruby picked up the thin blanket she'd kicked off in her thrashing and dabbed at her cheeks. The rough wool seemed to do a fair job of wiping up the moisture. While she sat there, Ruby groaned as she finally felt her head begin to pound. The redhead wasn't hung over yet, but she'd passed the point where the alcohol in her system would give her any real buzz. Before long she'd probably feel like her head was on fire. Ruby grumbled bitterly at how much of a lightweight she was, even after all these years. All these tears would only add to how dehydrated she'd be later.

After she was done, Ruby let the fabric slip from her fingers and back to the bed in a small pile next to her. Listening to the night's silence for a moment, Ruby wondered how loud her scream had been. While nobody shared the room with her, both Ren and Nora were through the wall on her right, and Weiss was probably asleep in the bed directly above her. The last thing she wanted was one of those three bursting down her door, wondering why Ruby was screaming in the middle of the night.

Standing up slowly, not hoping off the bed like she would have in her youth, Ruby slowly stretched and loosened up the muscles that had bunched up in her nightmares. Raising her arms above her head as she started ambling forward and looking down at herself, Ruby saw she was covered in a thin layer of sweat, giving herself a sort of sheen in the room's moonlight. Another reason she didn't want one of her neighbors barging in.

_'Although really... I mean, I can't imagine that I'd care that much. It's not like I'm that self-conscious. I don't think I'd even be bothered if it was one of the men'. _In the back of her mind, Ruby did also note... well, she definitely wasn't bad looking. After Caric, and the less than harsh winter, plus the past few weeks here, and Ruby was in fine shape. While she didn't have any excess, she had enough body fat to push her out of the malnourished category. For a split second, the errant and random thought of flirting with Ren just to playfully jab at Nora flashed through her mind.

The thought was so Yang-esqe, she suddenly felt a small pang of loss just at the memory of one of her older sister's quirks.

Stepping away from the wall, Ruby idled up to the waist-to-ceiling high window that lit the room with cool moonlight. Resting her palms on the cool marble ledge, Ruby pushed the window open and let the glass pane swing forward. She sighed happily as chilled night air swept through the room, washing her limbs of the heat that had brought her to a cold sweat.

Leaning out the window, half of her hanging out over the old academy grounds below, Ruby scanned the nighttime scene in front of her for any motion. Her old habits weren't going anywhere, and she still had the unconscious feeling she wasn't safe, that there was something out there...

But after she looked for far too long, Ruby sighed and had to give up. '_Nothing, just a few trees in the distance. I'm being paranoid...'_

The night air felt nice, a cool wind breathing in just for her as she stood leaning out the window. Exhaling happily, Ruby tried to finally let go of the last of her tension.

"...Damn." Even though she was calm enough now, Ruby knew herself enough to know that sleep wasn't going to be an option tonight, at least for a good while. She could feel that she was wired up, nearly bouncing off the walls with energy after her short nap.

"It's not like I don't know what this is all about," Ruby muttered to herself, holding her hands together one on top another, both palms facing up. The cool granite felt nice against the backs of her forearms. "My stress dreams always mean something..."

_'Damnit Mercury,'_ Ruby cursed internally. _'You make it sound soooo easy. As if I can just waltz up to Weiss and expect it'll all just go smoothly... Humph, like it's that simple...'_

But that was a lie. Ruby knew it would probably go well... the way everyone else was talking, it sounded like the only thing keeping her from Weiss was herself. Even with that knowledge though... Ruby couldn't help but hesitate.

Sure she wanted Weiss. Every fiber of her being wanted to be with Weiss again, to try to make everything feel just like the best days of her life in the past had.

And that feeling, her immeasurable amount of want, was precisely the reason she did hesitate. "I don't... I don't deserve to be that happy anymore... And it would be at Weiss's own expense too."

Ruby jumped in surprise when she felt a few cold drips land on her forearms. After she looked up at the perfectly clear night sky, searcing for rain clouds, the redhead sighed. They were just more tears. "I guess I've pulled the stopper, and now I just can't stop the waterworks... fantastic. I'm fucking swearing off alcohol..."

Her voice was starting to fade, already sounding a bit more husky and thick. Something about speaking her thoughts out loud made her feel better... almost like they were confessions. "I don't deserve Weiss... after all we've been through together, a third party would probably call me an abusive spouse... I've never hurt her, but I can say I've made her cry more times than anyone could count..."

Ruby let her head fall, leaning forward and her forehead burying itself in the crook of her elbows. Her tears kept coming, the drops flowing forward in full force "I-It's... It's pathetic... C-crying over something s-so stupid a-as..."

Her voice wouldn't carry her any further. Somehow she'd gone from frantic, to tense, to calm, and then all the way to abysmally depressed in a matter of seconds. Her words failed her, and for a second Ruby's jaw just moved up and down, grinding away with nothing more than a few hiccupy moans leaving her mouth.

"Um... are you okay Ruby?"

The girl in question, stuck with total shock by the new voice, flailed wildly. Ruby whirled around, one of her legs knocking the other out from underneath her as she turned. Ending up falling with her back against the wall, only one arm hooked on the window frame keeping her up, Ruby franticly stared back into the room as her eyes adjusted to the darkness behind her. Once they did, the redhead sighed. While she did have her eyes covered, with the blanket from Ruby's bed raised up high, the crop of orange hair visible over the line of hemming was easy enough to identify.

"Nora," Ruby sighed, slowly standing up and sniffling, feeling her heart rate slow as she regained some calm. "Nora, you can drop the blanket..."

Instead of listening, Nora held the blanket out at arms length, her head turned away with the other arm crossed over her eyes. She was dressed in an old t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants, both three sizes above her own. Probably for comfort. "I'm sorry, I, I just..."

Clearing her throat, Ruby reached out and took the woolen quilt from the shorter girl's hands. "I wouldn't have pegged you as a prune Nora." Wrapping the blanket around herself, the redhead kicked herself internally at the scratchiness of her own voice. It sounded like she'd been balling for the past hour, her voice still hoarse and thick.

"I'm not, I just wasn't sure if I was intru-"

"In all technicality, this building is _your _home," Ruby muttered, clasping the fabric in the center at her collarbone, bringing her arms out from underneath the red fabric and wearing the blanket as though it was some oversized patchwork poncho. "I don't think you could intrude even if I was in the shower and you just came waltzing in."

Nora lowered her arm, her eyes bright as she took in Ruby. "Odd way of putting it..."

"So...," Ruby hummed, rocking back and forth on the balls of her feet, the corners of her blanket swaying with her. "...Why are you here?"

"I couldn't sleep, and I heard you, ah... well, scream," Nora answered, anxiously stepping from foot to foot. "I, I tried your door. It wasn't locked, so I came in."

"Ah...," Ruby sighed. Really, she couldn't do anything else besides sigh. Ruby wasn't surprised that Nora would still be up. The girl'd had a long day, probably an extremely exhausting one. But one that would probably lead to quite a few restless nights in the coming weeks as well. "Couldn't sleep?"

Nora shook her head. "Nah... after the party Ren dozed off, I couldn't do anything else besides just lay there and stare at the ceiling..." Trying to lighten the conversation, Nora raised an eyebrow at the redhead. "So... do you always sleep like, well, like this?"

Looking down at herself, Ruby smiled slightly, swallowing a few times and failing to straighten her voice out. "Nope, not usually... didn't feel like sleeping in my clothes. Didn't feel like looking for night ones either." Ruby rolled her shoulders a few times after a sudden shiver, feeling the cool breeze wash over her back through the fabric.

"Ah... well, we're around the same size... I have a few I could loan you." Nora picked at the loose clothes hanging off her, pulling them away from her frame. "We've got a home; we deserve a few creature comforts..."

"Mmm-kay."

Nora kept rocking there for a few extra seconds, stewing in the silence with a look on her face that made it obvious something was still biting at her tongue. She then turned on a heel, and at first Ruby thought Nora was going to leave and be uncharacteristically quiet about all this.

But she didn't, and instead went to sit down on the edge of Ruby's bed. Nora patted the spot next to her, motioning for Ruby to take the seat next to her.

Ruby didn't even hesitate. She swallowed a few times, still trying to clear her voice and sound more level, before taking a place next to Nora. "So..."

"Hmph, sooo," Nora mocked, making fun of the wariness in Ruby's voice.

Ruby only responded by elbowing the ginger lightly in the side.

Nora just laughed, shifting slightly. "Thank you, by the way..." Nora stared down at her knees, which were crossed one over the other. "I mean... thank you for rallying the troops, coming to get me, keeping Ren out of all of it too..." She smirked to herself, and then muttered: "If you guys hadn't shown up, I'd have probably been giving blowies behind dumpsters this time tomorrow..."

"Don't mention it." Ruby let go of one side of the blanket as she spoke, so that it was now just hanging over her shoulders instead of being clasped together tightly at her collar. "I know you'd have gotten me or Weiss if it'd been the other way around."

Nora laughed. "Damn straight..."

There were a few seconds of silence, where Ruby kept on wiping at her eyes, just to make sure they were clear. Every time she'd still come away wet, as though there was no end to the constant stream of tears. Nora wasn't oblivious; she caught onto the waterworks immediately, although at first she didn't say anything.

"Your eyes are red," Nora commented meekly, watching the redhead out of the side of her eye.

Ruby just sniffed back "allergies."

"Ah..." Nora stayed silent for a moment before she turned to look at Ruby. "You know, I walked in here just as you made it to the window..."

"Hmmm..." Ruby didn't comment. She just kept her eyes trained forward, out the open window opposite them. She could feel Nora gazing at her knowingly, showing the knowledge that seemed to spend most of its time hidden.

"...So you seriously don't think you deserve her?" Nora watched Ruby, who didn't reply in anyway other than slowly breathing out through her nose, like a ballon that'd leaked air.

"...Nope." A few more droplets dripped off her nose, as she continued to tear up bitterly. She stopped trying to wipe them away though, instead bowing her head and letting the salty beads of water fall off the tip of her nose and dust the tops of her thighs.

"Here," Nora sighed, picking up the fleecy tip of the blanket next to Ruby and dabbing at the redhead's face herself. "First off, you do. You do, and every reason you have to tell yourself you don't... well, they're bullshit."

Ruby didn't respond, just pulled her legs up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, crushing herself into an even smaller space than her lean figure already took up. She rested her chin on her knees, so she could still stare out the window without having to put any energy into holding her head up.

"And even if you did..." Nora began, before she stopped. Just as she started to speak, she saw Ruby's shoulders start heaving up and down. One of the redhead's hands clamped over her mouth, with her eyes squeezed shut. "Ruby..." she cooed quietly, gently wrapping an arm around Ruby's shoulders and squeezing lightly.

"I-I don't want to cr-" Ruby stuttered, the words creaking out sadly. She shuddered under Nora's arm, her head pointing down so that her temples pressed against her kneecaps. "I don't get to just cr-"

"Shhhhhh," Nora hushed her. "It's good you're crying. You never do, even when the toughest of us should. Everybody cries, there's nothing wrong with it." She waited another second, and then whispered quietly: "Although... I'm not the one you should be crying to..."

Ruby shook her head, the tips of her hair flying every which way. "No, no no no I can't. Weiss has her own proble-"

"Stop that," Nora scolded her softly. "If you'd open your eyes, you'd see that you're the only thing in Weiss's world that she's even remotely concerned with."

Waiting a second, letting Ruby calm down a bit, Nora asked: "Could you tell me what that dream you had was about? The one you were talking about when I walked in..."

Between the rattily breathes, shaky pauses and complete breakdowns, it took Ruby nearly ten minutes to explain enough to Nora. Every few sentences, Ruby would have to stop and compose herself, pull herself back together. A part of Ruby, along with just being sad, was crying out of confusion now too. To Ruby, all this made no sense. It was like once she started crying, she couldn't stop her sob fest. Eventually Ruby finished her story, got everything out to Nora through the breaks and pauses.

"Hm... Well, it seems like you already know everything I was going to tell you."

"I, I, I..." Ruby stuttered, trying hard to regain a small amount of composure. She only held onto it for a second though, before she lost it again. "I hurt her so much!" A few more sobs lurched their way out, and Ruby whimpered: "I'm horrible... I'm..."

"That is the wrong point to take away from all that," Nora tisked, smiling slightly as she hugged Ruby. "You hurt her, sure. I'm not arguing that point with you; you seem to be set in stone there." Nora smiled, and in her voice Ruby could hear the girl's high spirits. "But you don't seem to understand that you're hurting her just as much by staying away..."

"I'm not the person you should be crying to... So, just sleep on it... You'll know what to do in the morning." Humming happily, Nora let Ruby stay on her shoulder, virtually soaking the ginger's over-sized t-shirt with salt. Staying rigid as stone until Ruby started fading off to sleep.

As Ruby's eyelids grew heavy, although they still also felt wet, she watched Nora smile as she drifted off. Towards the end, at the point where she was stuck between reality and a safer dreamland this go around, Ruby imagined someone else entirely there under her cheek. A pair of thinner shoulders supporting her head, singing her to sleep like she once had a lifetime ago. Serenading her with the most beautiful voice in the world.

* * *

Her hangover wasn't as horrible as she'd expected. Waking up, the orange sun already shining dully into her room, Ruby slowly sat up groaning. She was still under her blanket, although another one had been thrown over her at some point during the night.

Nora was gone, which was to be expected. Ruby, through her surprisingly small headache, was already regretting all her neediness last night. It wasn't right to make Nora, after all she went through yesterday, listen and take care of her problems.

Standing up, Ruby slowly stretched her arms over her head again, this time feeling a lack of tension. _'Well, at least my moment of being a crybaby had some use...' _Ruby thought sourly, still kicking herself for how she'd acted last night. Sure alcohol had had a small part in the previous night... but more than anything, it was just Ruby finally letting the damn burst. She actually checked to see if her eyes were still tearing up. They were dry though.

Out of the corner of her eye, Ruby noticed a square of white covered with plashes of red standing out on the bedsheet, almost ready to tip over and off the edge. Taking it with a hand, Ruby wasn't too surprised to find a note. It seemed to be how everybody communicated nowadays. After she easily identified the handwriting, Ruby thought to herself: _'so what next, is Nora gonna run for the hills too?'_

Shaking her head, Ruby let her eyes wander over the note blandly, following down the trial of thick block letters a few times before she actually absorbed anything from them. Starting from the top again, Ruby forced herself to focus on her friends note.

**My dear, sweet, caring, oh so wet friend (I mean the tears from last night, not as in... never mind),**

Ruby almost put down the letter there, rolling her eyes as she imagined Nora stooped over a desk, cackling madly as she wrote this out. But she continued on, more for a laugh than anything else.

**After our talk last night, I know you'll be off to do what's right. It's what you both deserve...  
I left a bit after I was sure you were asleep, so that Ren wouldn't come searching for me.  
Although, I would love to see his face if he walked in here to find you naked in my arms...  
I came back a bit later, although you were still asleep a bit after three, if the grandfather clock downstairs is still accurate.  
Nobody had the heart to wake you, which I was perfectly fine with, you deserved a break.  
Anyways, I left you some extra clothes by the door, something a bit nicer yet still something that looked like you'd wear.  
I asked Weiss to keep watch from the arms room for me, while everybody's doing actual watch with me up on the fourth floor common room.  
Go get her tiger.**

"..Three?" Looking up from Nora's somewhat heartfelt, yet extremely sarcastic letter, Ruby glanced out her window and towards the sky. With how low the sun was sitting in its ark, the time was probably a few minutes before seven. Before long and the sun would have been completely out of view, lost out of sight below the ring of trees encircling the academy.

_'No wonder I don't have a hangover, I've already slept it off...'_

Sighing loudly, Ruby let the note slip between her fingers and fall faced down on the bed. She didn't need to be told twice. Mercury's last piece of advice had been enough, and Nora's only added more resolve to Ruby's already made decision. _'I've been running from this for far too long,' _Ruby absentmindedly mused as she walked away from her mattress and toward her room's door. _'Hell, maybe she'll be smart and flat out turn me down.'_

Smirking at the grim thought as she walked, Ruby came to the door frame. And at her feet, where the note left for her said they'd be, was Nora's promised pile of clothes.

Without taking the time to look through them, Ruby pulled the new pieces on, absentmindedly noting they felt somewhat stiff, like they'd been in a drawer under a lot of weight for quite a few years. Luckily they all fit, or at least they felt like they did. With her arms over her head as she slipped something thin and red over her shoulders, Ruby thought: _'Weiss isn't an idiot, she knows you can't see shit from the new arms room...' _Shaking her head as she started having doubts already, Ruby stood up straight and turning towards her room's mirror, taking a long look at herself.

Ruby was dressed more... she couldn't think of the word to describe it. She guessed it would've had been calm. Or... tranquil? Her outfit wasn't built for survival. Hell, it wasn't even for working. A pair of knee length black silk shorts and a red flannel blouse that flared out around the waist. The blouse was crisscrossed with scattered white lines, webs of threading that seemed to keep swirling even while Ruby stood still.

She looked... well, Ruby realized she looked like she was dressed for a normal Sunday, before everything had happened. A part of her didn't like the outfit, reluctant in how casual the clothes felt. They didn't make sense to wear now. But she also was a bit mesmerized by the plainness of it all. In this room untouched by the apocalypse, in this outfit, Ruby could imagine for a moment the world as if it hadn't ended. That she'd live the last decade happily, that she'd spent those years helping people as a huntress, and that today was a simple day off .

In the end, Ruby decided she liked the look. Nora had done a good job. Nodding to herself, the redhead looked in the mirror, wondering for a quick second if she should do anything with her hair, before deciding to just let her locks hang like she usually did.

Ruby started walking out of the room, squaring her shoulders as she went, before she looked down and smirked. She was wearing her old hiking boots, out of habit throwing them on as soon as she got dressed. The scuffed, scratched, worn out beige leather didn't match in the slightest with the rest of her outfit. She leaned down and pulled the shoes off, not even bothering with the laces. _'I guess I'm going barefoot,' _Ruby smiled to herself, throwing the boots onto her bed.

Landing next to the note, Ruby realized there was something written on the back too as the paper nearly fell off the bed. A bit more hastily scratched out, more frantic than the rest of the words on the other side. Plucking the note out of the air just before it hit the floor, Ruby read the simple sentence, folding the note up and sliding the paper into her back pocket before she walked out the door.

**Thank you. For giving me something else to think about besides myself last night. Don't kick yourself for relying on me.  
You helped me more than I helped you.**

** ~Nora**

* * *

_'Hell, I should just dust mop this floor every once in a while...'_

As Ruby walked along, her hands together in a knot while she tried working out her nerves, she could feel flecks of dirt and dust sticking the thick, roughened skin of her feet. The slick, still shiny marble floors looked clean enough, but apparently that wasn't entirely true.

_'I'll... I'll walk up to her and go... no, I'll just come up behind her and wait until she notices... nah, that's creepy, I should...'_

Ruby kept on wrestling with her internal emotions, trying to think of what to say and how to say it. Running her hand along the molded banister to her right, Ruby looked over the balcony she was walking along. It led from the second floor, where almost everyone slept, to either a staircase spiraling upwards or down to the ground floor. The entire building was four floors, a model to the four years in hunter training. Old team RWBY's dorm was on floor three, same with every other team that was her year. When the fourth years left and vacated their rooms, newbie hunters would take up those rooms, constantly keeping the ages on the different floors rotating.

Shaking those thoughts out of her mind and returning to the problem at hand, Ruby finally grumbled bitterly: '_Hell_,_ who am I kidding? I've got about as much charm as a rock nowadays.' _Ruby thought to herself as she hooked an arm around the pillar at the end of the rail she was walking along, swinging down the staircase and taking the steps two at a time. The polished wood was scuffed after all these years, and under Ruby's bare feet she could actually feel some of the swirly ridges on the raised wooden slats. _'I better just, I don't know, talk...'_

The redhead knew didn't want to be turned down. Even after all she'd said, all the bittersweet jokes she'd made, Ruby knew she wanted Weiss and her to be together again. _'But I remember it being less than a season ago, when the longest conversations we had were shouting matches...'_

Ruby winced bitterly at the memories, and in the back of her mind she added: _'...my fault...'_

Reaching the bottom of the staircase, immediately turning left, Ruby's eyes landed on the door everything was leading towards. Barely open, the wood scuffed and scarred, covered in deep gashes and divots that ruined the mahogany finish. From here, it looked like somebody had spent too many days throwing knives into the thick oak, probably while fighting off boredom.

The twenty foot walk between the end of the staircase and the door was agonizingly long. The entire distance, Ruby tried to find something to do with her hands. She had the urge to shove them into jean pockets or the pouch of a hoodie, but her outfit left her without either of the two hiding places.

_'I wonder,' _Ruby thought as she came up to the door, her fingers trailing back and forth along the slices in the wood as she stalled for a second,_ 'if Nora planned that, so I wouldn't have a place to hide them ...'_

_R_uby squared her shoulders once, twisted her neck and got a satisfying pop out a turn to the left, before pushing the door forward to walk in. There was a half second where light spilled out of the crack between the door frame and the heavy wooden door, like water gushing out from a broken dam. She was blinded for a moment, before the redhead could see everything.

* * *

Singing to herself softly, Weiss made up her own little tune as she hummed, trying to distract herself from the boredom that was her watch. She'd switch back and forth between softly sung notes, hums and whistles, weaving them all together into an impromptu beauty. Even after all this time, Weiss was confident in saying she'd held onto her gifted voice through all these years.

_'Although,' _Weiss mused, smiling to herself as she scanned the room and the peeling sea green wallpaper that already drooped away sadly from the walls, _'these definitely aren't the venues Father used to have me perform in...'_

Sitting on her small crate, which she'd found shoved into the rooms corner, Weiss sat with her legs folded underneath her. Watching the swaying trees off in the distance, as their tall and arching branches leaned back and forth with the breeze, their leaves dusted gold by the soon to be setting sun.

She actually had to shift her ankle every once in a while, the hard and rough wood underneath her heel cutting off the flow of blood to her feet. Every few minutes she'd feel her lower leg start buzzing with numbness, similar to the feeling of the hardcore painkillers she'd been given once for a broken arm. Weiss was so bored that she actually let her foot and calf go numb, just so it'd give her mind something to think about as she shook them awake. She needed something to bide the time, until whatever she was here for would eventually show up.

_'Okay Nora, I'm tired of waiting... its been nearly ten hours, and you sure as hell wouldn't have asked me to keep watch here if you actually wanted a lookout, can't see anything from this room...'_

Looking around, Weiss's lips couldn't help but twitch as she started to laugh at her humble surroundings. _'Quite the stronghold...'_

For an armory, the room was pretty depressing. Really, it was just two racks of extra weapons, on a few thrown together metal shelves precariously propped up against one of the room's walls. The only usable weapons on the ledges were two rifles, neither as good as Ruby's own personal hunting rifle, along with a spare rusted shotgun, an untouched SMG that nobody seemed comfortable using, and a small plastic bin filled with a dozen or so pistols, revolvers, and others handguns. Everybody kept their own weapons on them, meaning this room was really filled with only spares and discards. Three duffel bags filled with half empty ammo boxes were piled underneath the shelves, all originally promised to be emptied and organized by Nora. And that promise, evident enough by the now scattered bullets across the floor, had gone nowhere.

But while their stock pile was measly, Weiss had to keep on reminding herself that it was really only for six people. And for the longest time, only four. These guns, plus everyone's own personal firearms, were more than enough.

Originally this had been team CFVY's dorm. But Weiss remembered how after she and Ruby had arrived, Nora'd insisted on clearing out the old team RWBY dorm. And that switch had taken her, Ruby, Nora and Ren a single trip down the staircase, and even then the blonde hadn't been carrying much. Just to give Weiss a bit of the home touch, back in her old dorm.

"Shame I have nobody to share it with," Weiss muttered, letting the words flow out on a sigh as her shoulders sank. Ruby still felt like keeping her distance, and had just picked some crappy visitors bedroom on the floor below her. _'I don't think Ruby even knew she was moving in next to Nora and Ren until the night everybody went off to sleep...'_

Suddenly, a knock came from behind her, a soft rapping that sounded less like knuckles against wood and more like the sound of fingers thrumming against the top of a desk. Looking back, Weiss lips unconsciously twitched into a smile as she saw who was standing in the door way.

"Hey Ruby, I was just talking about you," Weiss called, seeing the other woman barely poking her head in. By the look on the redhead's face, it seemed like Ruby was only half happy that she'd been see. While she smiled, the second she and Ruby locked eyes Weiss saw...

Weiss had a hard time believing it; she hadn't seen the look in quite a while. But from the look coming across Ruby's silver gaze, it seemed like the redhead was actually... well, scared. Almost like a deer getting stared down by a beowolf, already pulling back and ready to bolt. "Ruby, what's wrong? You okay?"

"Hey Weiss," The redhead answered meekly, ignoring Weiss's question. "...no, nothing really," Ruby muttered, holding onto the door frame she'd been clinging to for a few extra seconds before actually walking into the room. "Just thought I should say hi..."

Ruby took a few steps forward, into the soft evening light filtering in through the room's tall windows. "Wow," Weiss remarked, arching one of her delicate eyebrows as she looked Ruby up and down. "You dress yourself?"

"Nope, Nora decided she'd dress me today. Found these left for me by my door." Spinning around, dancing towards Weiss on the tips of her toes Ruby remarked: "How do I look?"

Weiss snorted, her lips twitching into a thin smile. "Not bad, not bad. Although I do miss my usual armed to the teeth, leather wearing, gun slinging partner. I can't even remember the last time I saw you without shoes," Weiss laughed, looking down at Ruby's bare feet. They were pail, almost snow white from the lack of sunlight they received.

"Don't worry about it too much, I won't be changing my usual outfit," Ruby replied, stepping up next to Weiss. Rolling her shoulders, the redhead huffed "I'm not too thrilled about the lack of padding myself either. After all this time it's hard to believe that this was my usual casual wear..."

As she spoke, Weiss noticed something a tad off in the redhead's voice. There was this sort of shakiness, somewhere between nervous and fearful. _'It probably has to do with Mercury...,' _Weiss sighed to herself, sure she'd landed on her reason. After he'd left last night, Ruby had tried to act calm and composed, come in like nothing had happened. But everyone else could see pretty quickly how shaken she'd been, and how edgy she was that night.

_'And I'm glad she was,' _Weiss remarked, looking up at her partner's face. _'If she'd taken Mercury bailing without missing a beat I'd be more worried than if she-'_

"May I?" Ruby suddenly asked the question as she pointed down to the spot next to Weiss, breaking the blonde's train of thought.

"Nope, it's mine" Weiss joked, shifting over a bit and contradicting her statement. _'A hell, I'll get a chance to her ask in a minute...'_

Sitting down next to her, Weiss felt a hand brush over the side of her own as Ruby took her spot. Weiss didn't respond, although she couldn't help but feel like her hand was warmer now, a soft heat spreading from the tiny point of contact through her skin and all the way up to the crook of her elbow.

"So," Weiss muttered, her voice hanging on that small word for a few seconds, "how're you doing?"

"Uh, fine, fine," Ruby replied, seemingly unable to think of anything else to say. Weiss could tell by Ruby's immediate scowl that the redhead was already kicking herself over that sort response.

"Hung over?" Even though she was concerned, Weiss couldn't help the small laugh that snuck its way into her voice as she asked.

That got her, a thin smile cracking Ruby's somewhat nervous composure. "Actually no, not really."

"Seriously?" Weiss tisked to Ruby mockingly, sighing loud enough for it to sound more than fake. "What a shame, maybe your days of being a lightweight are behind you?" Leaning backwards, letting herself fall onto the hard wooden crate so she was staring up at the ceiling, Weiss whistled a low soft note. "It was fun messing with you back then, you after a single drink, barely able to see straight..."

"You know I only got one drink in me last night, and it was less than this much," Ruby grumbled, holding her thumb and forefinger less than two inches apart over Weiss's face. "It's not like I'm Nora, who decides to take down half a vodka bottle and thinks she'll be just peachy..."

"Ruby, let me tell you a thing," Weiss started, letting one of her hanging feet smack lightly against Ruby's calf. "Everyone, and when I say everyone I mean _everyone_, was amazed by how little you could drink before you'd actually get drunk. The second a shot passed your lips it was easy enough to see you were hammered by that dopey look you'd get on your face. Hell, even teachers would sometimes come when we'd go out drinking just to see for themselves how much of a lightweight you were."

"They did not," Ruby laughed, although Weiss could tell the redhead wasn't actually too sure.

"Believe me, I made over a hundred bucks on a bet with Port that you couldn't take two shots of vodka. After I won Glynda started making these hypothesizes that it had something to do with your speed semblance, that you'd be absorbing alcohol almost instantly."

"Huh," Ruby muttered, the corners of her lips twitching into a smile, "so... maybe the world ending and my losing all my powers wasn't that bad after all." Leaning forward and resting her chin on her palm, Ruby huffed: "...I'll finally be able to enjoy a tequila sunrise..."

"Sure sure," Weiss laughed, glad Ruby wasn't acting all surly and quiet anymore. "So Ruby...," she started, the end of her laughter bringing forth another emotion. Worry.

"Yeah?" Ruby smiled back at Weiss, her lips spread crookedly as she turned her head to look at the lying down heiress.

"...Mercury." Weiss winced the second she mentioned his name, watching as Ruby's face fell. "Are you okay? I mean, last night-"

"I'm fine," Ruby sighed, pulling up one leg and wrapping one arm around her shin, placing the other next to Weiss's ear to keep herself propped up. Resting her chin on her knee for a few seconds, the redhead stared forward out the window in thought. "I just... I just wish he hadn't. Or that I'd seen it earlier, so that I could have thought for longer on how to stop him."

"...I think he'd been planning on leaving for a while," Weiss replied, watching Ruby's face as she talked. Ruby's put her hand down close, and Weiss kept on getting distracted as she felt the knuckles of the redhead's long fingers tickle her earlobe.

"Seriously," Ruby asked, her voice colored with both surprise and sadness.

"Yeah...I mean, he'd been eyeing the road out of town for the past few weeks... he'd never really unpacked, never really claimed a room..."

"I guess..." Ruby sighed, shaking her head. "Fucking sucks..."

Weiss nodded in agreement. "It does, I'm gonna miss him..."

"Think he'll ever be back?"

Wondering how to respond, Weiss sighed. "Gives us a good reason to stick around, doesn't it?"

"Hmm...Guess it does, doesn't it?"

For a few minutes, that was it. They both just sat together in the silence, enjoying the soft quiet surround them both. After years of terse replies and bitter snaps, they were both fine with the small lull in conversation, especially one only this short. Ruby kept shifting and squirming, as though she couldn't find a comfortable seat on the wooden edge.

Sighing, more amused than annoyed as she watched the back of Ruby, Weiss thought: 'Of_ course you can't find a comfy spot, it's a har-'_

Interrupting the blonde's thoughts again, Ruby started: "I didn't want to talk about Mercury though."

"Alright, I understand..." Weiss brought one of her hands in front of her face, bending and flexing her fingers, watching the light play off the oval disks on the end of each digit. Absentmindedly, she wondered if anybody had a file or polish to share, or anything really to work out the dozens of tiny scuffs in her nails.

"I wanted to talk about... well, I..." Ruby squirmed a few more seconds, before she rushed out the thought she'd been chewing on in a single breath.

"I wanted to talk about us."

* * *

Watching Weiss, Ruby waited for a reply on batted breath.

From the look on her face, Ruby could tell the blonde hadn't been expecting the conversation to take this turn. Weiss went from inspecting her nails, a pointless task as each one was as perfect as always, to being so stunned that she dropped her hand above her face. With the dull thud of skin on skin, the back of Weiss's palm lightly smacked her on the forehead, momentarily blocking the blonde's eyes from view.

"W-well," Ruby started stuttering, the nervousness in her voice already creeping its way back in on its own after Weiss's reaction. "I-I just wanted to talk to you, not about you..."

Weiss still said nothing, and out of fear from being misunderstood the redhead added: "I mean, it's not like I have a problem or anything..."

Just lying there, Weiss watched Ruby, her eyes wide and apprehensive. With her back against the hard surface of the wood, Ruby couldn't tell if Weiss shoulders were actually raised or just... just raised.

"I've just... well," she started again, seeming at a loss for words. Ruby knew she'd shoved herself clear past the point of no return. She'd either succeed or fail tonight.

"It's just that I wanted to say sorry, for everything that's gone on between us." Twisting her hands in front of her, Ruby tried to recall some of the things she'd planned up last night, some of the apologies she'd crafted.

"I've got a lot to say sorry for," Ruby started, almost reading the sentence out as though she'd rehearsed it a thousand times. That number was pretty fair. "And I don't know if I'll have the... the years of time...," she trialed off, already half forgetting what she was going to say. The way her heart was clenched up in her chest, almost causing her actual pain, was making it hard to even get out that measly sentence.

"I know I'm not easy to be around lately, and that I'm edgy and mean now..." This was easier; she didn't have to think on how to insult herself. The thoughts started flowing easier, although Ruby had to stare out the window in front of her, avoid Weiss's harsh and fathomless gaze. Every time she caught her piercing icy eyes, Ruby couldn't help but lose sight of everything else.

"I'm cruel and bitchy now, and I've been about as good at conversation as a rabid Beowolf for the past few years. I've... I've treated you worse than anyone has ever treated anybody. I'm so, so sorry that I've made you cry as many times as I have..."

Ruby stuttered off, realizing that she'd never be able to put it all into words. Instead she just started waiting, for Weiss to say something, say anything. Even if she felt fists start pounding on her back, Ruby felt like she deserved them at this point. What she received was far worse... silence. Weiss was so quiet that Ruby couldn't even hear any of the blonde's breathing.

"I'm..." Ruby's shoulders sagged, her voice almost crushed by loss and defeat. "I'm just sorry..."

Rocking forward, Ruby slowly got up off the crate, taking a few steps forward. Standing in front of Weiss with her back to the blonde, her arms both wrapped around her own chest tight. Ruby's fingers curled around each side of her waist, gripping the thin red fabric tightly. _'Why am I so sad? I always expected rejection would be how this ended...'_

Trying to stand as tall as possible, Ruby arched her back and stared straight ahead toward the orange horizon. None had spilled, but Ruby could see the salty droplet already beading up across her vision, making everything along the bottom edge seem distorted and warped. She wouldn't let Weiss see her cry because of this. Guilt tripping the blonde wasn't what she wanted.

"I'm still... I'm still in love with you Weiss." It was easier to say this... now that it was over, Ruby could actually think somewhat clearly.

_'All that time I spent putting myself back together was a waste huh,'_ Ruby thought bitterly. _'Wonder what Mercury would say if he was here... probably some half assed snappy quote or saying...'_

"I'm not trying to win you over Weiss, or guilt trip you into anything... I just want you to know how I feel, and that I just want you to be safe. This doesn't change that..."

Finally there was a sound behind her... and it was the sound of hard leather boots against the rough wooden floor, as Weiss softly slid off the crate she'd been lying down on. Ruby heard four steps, each one slow and deliberate, as Weiss walked up behind her.

Ruby kept on blinking, trying to pull back a straight face. Would she get slapped? Shouted at? Screamed at? Ruby couldn't imagine how Weiss would react, until she thought of the worse one of all.

What if... What if Weiss just left, without saying a word? Ruby wouldn't have been able to take that. She wouldn't have been able to take any of the things she was thinking of... but that would have left Ruby as just a shell to collapse in on herself. To just implode at the loss of hope that still kept her from falling to dust.

But whatever she would do, the blonde wasn't going to leave Ruby to shatter on her own in silence. Ruby felt a pinch at the fabric around her shoulder, slowly pulling that side of her back and turning her around.

As she spun, the redhead found herself turned towards Weiss. Ruby looked down at the girl who was standing right in front of her now, barely any space separating them at all. Once Ruby faced her entirely, she just stood there still, waiting. She couldn't help it, and Ruby she saw a single tear slide off her face and drip off her nose. Staring into Weiss's inscrutable, glacial eyes, Ruby's suddenly felt dry.

"Weiss..." Ruby shuddered, looking down into the pale blue a head below her. "I'm... I'm hollow Weiss." As she spoke Ruby strained her voice, making sure that now of all times, that she wouldn't let her voice crack and break. "I can't make you happy as just an old, broken shard of the old me..."

Two fists, side by side, bunched up at the fabric near her collar, both of Weiss's hands grabbing at the front of Ruby's blouse. Unconsciously tensing up, Ruby let her arms stay wrapped around her waist. Whatever Weiss was going to do, Ruby would make sure her reflexes wouldn't stop her.

Weiss pulled her down, to the shorter girl's eye level. _'Probably so she'll have an easy time hitting me... I think she'd be more of the back handed slap type...'_

"Ruby," Weiss's voice murmured, slipping out between barely parted lips. Her eyes looked like she had more to say, nearly reflecting her thoughts like a beacon lamp. But after a few seconds of just staring into Ruby's pools of molten silver, she just whispered:

"...shut up."

Ruby's eye widened at the voice in front of her. It wasn't cold or angry, it wasn't bitter... it was soothing, sweet, kind. Loving.

And her legs almost gave out when Weiss pulled Ruby a few more inches in, bringing their faces together. Ruby watched as Weiss turned hers slightly to the left, just enough so that their noses didn't get in the way of each other's.

As they kissed.

Her legs almost gave out as they kissed, and Ruby actually sunk a bit lower than Weiss as the blonde wrapped her arms behind Ruby. It wasn't long and drawn out, or filled with any of the raw passion a five year gap would contain. But somewhere in it, as they slowly just did nothing more than kiss, they washed away their pain and anger. Even the small specks they'd forgotten about were swept away. Leaving them with nothing but love and bliss.

Ruby's arms fell slack around her, dangling as she tried to catch up. Her eyes were closed, just letting all these thoughts and feelings sink in. She felt Weiss break off their kiss, using her still clenched hands to push Ruby just an inch away.

Ruby opened her eyes, and noticed nothing more than the blue one's right in front of her. They were sparkling, shining bright as Weiss smiled.

"If your hollow, then I want you to be whole. Because I love you too," Weiss hummed, just as she pulled Ruby in, pulling her close for another kiss.


	19. What Will We Be?

Lost in the night's darkness, barely any moonlight spilling in through the open third story window behind them, Ruby had to pull away just to get the chance at a breath. Her eyes, usually able to see more than enough in the dark, now struggled to find anything in the washed out gloom surrounding her. The shadows that clung to every form and figure, hiding from her an old home.

"Aren't..." Ruby started to ask, the sound of her voice wavering with its breathlessness. "Aren't we going a bit fast?"

Underneath her, Weiss just stared up at Ruby, the only emotion on her perfect face annoyance at the sudden stop. "Well, if anything, I'd say we've been going unbearably slow." Cupping a hand behind Ruby's neck, the blonde pulled the girl above her close and whispered: "...a ten year engagement would usually mean the proposer's getting cold feet, wouldn't it? ...No reason to hold back, and I'd hate for you to think I'm getting flighty after all this time..."

Before Ruby could respond, Weiss caught her lips again, and held her there silently. Leaving her unable to speak, and barely able to think, as they continued on into their night.

* * *

Lying there on her old bed, with Weiss cradling her head in her lap, Ruby couldn't help but feel somewhat out of place. All this... it didn't feel quite right. If Ruby had been told to put this feeling, this rolling ache in her chest, into words... it would have been a struggle. If you'd given her enough time to mull over her thoughts, Ruby would probably have said it felt like she'd gotten herself lost in another person's story. The sharp contrast between the past few years and the last few days left her unsure that she hadn't slipped out of her own biography and into someone else's brighter pages.

_'Why do I get to come back from that?'_ Ruby gave a small shudder, the cold wind blowing in from the open window, breaking her train of thought._ 'How does my life get to be like this, from so bitter to this sweet?'_

Goosebumps stood up all across her arms, as she felt Weiss's nimble fingers play with the locks of hair above her temples. The blonde would catch a strand at the base, between a thumb and forefinger, and softly pull upwards until the hair slipped from her fingers. Then... she'd repeat. To Ruby, the motion seemed a bit like whenever Weiss would scratch at her scar, whenever she wasn't really there and more than anything just lost in thought.

"You know," Weiss sighed, a smile in her voice, "your hair is probably longer than mine right now..."

"Hmph... jealous?" Shifting her head and gazing up, Ruby looked at the bare torso of Weiss, arching above her and occupying everything she could see. It'd been a long time since she'd seen this much bare skin from Weiss, and a part of Ruby was shocked by how perfect it still was. Smooth and creamy, Weiss's skin somehow appeared simultaneously delicate and strong. Like perfect porcelain, or polished marble.

Of course, how perfect Weiss seemed just made Ruby feel even more out of place. Somewhat self-conscious, the redhead absentmindedly wondered how her skin compared. _'Well, it's definitely not smooth'_, Ruby grumbled internally, shifting as Weiss's calves became uncomfortable under her neck.

'_Not smooth... not by a long shot...'_

Ruby knew she was covered in nicks and scars, over marked from the years of constantly being sliced up, restitched, and repeating the process all over again. In her mind's eye, Ruby saw herself damaged, pockmarked with bullet holes and the echoing crescent shaped smiles from stab wounds. She was Like an old, rusted, scuffed up klunker, somehow parked next to a fresh off the lot Corvette. Lying out in front of Weiss, the back of Ruby's mind couldn't help but worry how the blonde was judging her now.

"No... No, I'm not particularly envious..." Weiss murmured, breaking Ruby's train of thought, pulling the redhead back to the simpler conversation. "After all... you've got so many split ends, my hair's still a thousand times better," Weiss laughed, smiling at the mock insult hanging across Ruby's face. Leaning down, Weiss planted a slow kiss on the dip in Ruby's brow. As the blonde's locks fell over Ruby's face, she had to fight off a sneeze as the white strands just barely tickled her nose.

Reaching up, her right arm leaving the bed, Ruby lightly flicked Weiss on the forehead. Really, the tip of her finger barely brushed against the blonde, Ruby smiling as she watched Weiss's eyes open. Without breaking contact, Weiss let her icy eyes do all the necessary talking for her.

"Hey now, cut that out..." Ruby complained. "We aren't gonna get that lovey-dovey. Unless things have really changed, I distinctly remember neither of us being able to stand those types of couples without wanting to hurl..."

After a few seconds, just long enough for Ruby to wonder if she was even listening, Weiss's lips made a soft plinksound as they left the redhead's forehead. And Weiss just hung there above Ruby, with her lips just slightly parted, her eyes lidded heavily as though they were about to flutter shut any second.

Taking just long enough to make the moment intimate, Weiss slowly backed up, arching her back until she was straight up over Ruby again. Looking down on the redhead in her lap, her icy eyes were hard to decipher. Weiss looked up and down Ruby, and slowly, barely brushing over Ruby as she did so, her hands trailed down the redhead's sides. It was maddening, the sensation almost giving Ruby full power tremors as Weiss's cool fingertips slowly brushed along her skin.

When her fingers stopped bouncing over the ridges of Ruby's thin chest, both of the blonde's hands turned and followed the curve of Ruby's rib cage up towards her sternum. They trailed over the redhead's center, until her pail fingers landed on the redhead's most obvious scar. A bullet wound, with a shallow dip in the center barely the size of Weiss's thumb, surrounded by tendrils of red that streaked out from the midpoint. Against her tan skin, it almost looked like Ruby's chest had been branded with a sun, directly opposite her heart. Weiss's fingers stopped there, slowly swirling and tickling the new skin, admiring what had probably been frantic work on Mercury's part.

"...So," Weiss started to ask, not paying too much attention to Ruby as the redhead shifted and squirmed underneath her hands, "what kind of couple will we be then?"

Ruby paused for a second, honestly considering the question. What kind of couple were they? Reaching up, holding her palm against Weiss's cheek and feeling for the blonde's warmth, she repeated: "What kind of couple do we want to be?"

Her question didn't wrestle an answer out of the blonde. Leaving the sun, Weiss's two hands broke apart and separated. They both went off to different spots, skimming over to another two scars. One landed on Ruby's upper arm, brushing along the edges of another bullet wound, this one only a few weeks older than the sun. The other hooked under the tip Ruby's chin, feeling the split in her skin that the redhead had only received a month or so ago.

"I don't have enough," Weiss commented absentmindedly, either sidestepping or ignoring Ruby's new question to her previous one. While she talked, she twisted the arm that had been playing with the girl below her's chin, watching the soft moonlight play off the smooth skin of her bare arm. "Scars, I mean... we don't really balance out, us being on the road together so long..."

"Nope." Ruby started pressing her hand into Weiss's cheek more, firmly holding her palm against the blonde's face until Weiss had to respond and lean back against Ruby. "You don't need scars. Nobody does."

Weiss ignored Ruby, her eyes trailing from one mark to another, finding no lack of subjects to inspect. "They're proof you lived..."

"They're proof of pain," Ruby responded, trying to catch Weiss's eye. With the world flipped, it was hard to capture the blonde's gaze. "They are proof of missteps and mistakes. That's it, and nothing more. You don't need scars to prove you lived. And besides," Ruby smirked, trying to lighten the mood, "you're still so pail, you could probably be covered head to toe in scar tissue and we'd never know."

"Hmmm, you have a point... Well, I don't want us to be the couple we were back when we were kids," Weiss sighed, finally answering Ruby's… her question. "And we were such kids back then. Stupid, foolish kids..."

"I guess...," Ruby muttered, thinking back on who she had been nearly a decade ago. For the past few years, Ruby had felt unbridled and unrestrained hatred for her old self, towards her long lost happy go lucky ways. Now... the redhead was starting to really miss those simple, kind, easy emotions. How easy it used to come to her, to just think nice things, without even trying.

"Ruby... I want to say something." Weiss's eyes were clear, the laugh in them entirely gone.

"And you need to announce it?" Sitting up and scooting across the soft sheets so she was now leaning up against Weiss, Ruby felt a bit of nervousness creep into her limbs. _'Oh god, that look in her eyes is never a good sign... What if Weiss says this was it, that all this was a mistake? Or that she just wanted this last time...'_

"Shoot Weiss," Ruby answered, catching and grinding those fears to dust. They were out of place, useless to her now. Irrelevant echoes of a question that had already been answered. Ruby knew Weiss wanted her, wanted them to be _them_ again, for us to actually mean _'us'_.

"That... That girl..." Weiss started, for some reason having trouble with the words. Ruby couldn't help but note how cute the way Weiss's eyebrows dipped together while she thought was. The face looked just like when Weiss got pissed, except for the lack of venom in her eyes. Ruby could remember seeing that look, which had spent most of its time angled directly at her, almost once a week back in her teens.

Weiss finally got whatever she'd been trying to put together in order, because the blonde suddenly deadpan dropped:

"That girl, the one who made me laugh and, and want to sing, forget about all my worries for as long as I wanted... The wonderful girl, who gave me the closest thing I had to any real relationship, and so much more than that too, way back when we were kids..." Weiss hesitated for a second leaned in a bit closer, turning towards Ruby so she was looking the redhead straight in the eyes.

"I just don't love her anymore."

Ruby stiffened, leaning back. "Weiss, what do you-?"

"And," Weiss cut her off, raising her voice, "you don't love that old prissy girl from our school days. The one who'd constantly tell you off and give you a hard time, push you to do better even when you were already the best there could be. Even at her greatest moments, when she wasn't driving you insane with all her insecurity and indecisiveness... you still don't love that girl anymore."

"Wait Weiss, that isn't tru-" Ruby started, before she was cut off again, this time by Weiss darting forward and capturing her lips. The blonde's arms, thin yet strong, hooked around Ruby's neck and pulled her down. Weiss fell back on the bed, and made Ruby lay down on top of her, still holding onto the kiss.

This one lasted for a while, and it wasn't until they were both nearly out of breath that they broke apart. And this one was followed by a second, third, and fourth kiss, before they actually took a break. When they did, Ruby just stayed there on top of Weiss, staring down into her clear azure eyes, her breathing hard. Weiss was the same, and her gaze was just as solid as she stared up into Ruby's silver pools.

"You're giving me mixed signals here Weiss," Ruby muttered, a nervous chuckle on her voice as she finally broke the brittle silence between them.

Weiss smiled and placed a hand on the back of Ruby's neck, pulling the girl above her down. Her head past Weiss's, Ruby shivered again as she felt her partner's cool breath whisper against her ear. Speaking through the curtain of ruddy auburn strands, the blonde hummed:

"I just don't love her anymore. Because I love you now."

"...That's it? Isn't that the same thing?" Ruby started laughing lightly, no more than a small chuckle.

"Nope." After a few more kisses on her jawline, more just pecks at her cheek than anything else, Weiss lightly trailed her hand along Ruby's side, signaling for the redhead to roll off. Once Ruby was at her side, her head propped up in a hand, Weiss went on.

"I don't love her anymore, because I love this you now... This me, after all these years and all the things we've gone through, couldn't love that wonderfully silly girl anymore." Weiss shifted so she was on her side, and Ruby mirrored the motion. The way Ruby was lying down though, she still had one of Weiss's arms pinned under her head. "She's just not what I would want anymore... I think you don't love that old Weiss, and I hope you'll love this new me now."

"I think I love you both...," Ruby sighed, trying to take the middle ground, smiling at the wistful look on Weiss's face. Before she could say anything else though, Weiss had placed a single, delicate finger on her lips, shushing the redhead.

"Let me finish all my thoughts... This life we've lived, all the time we've shared... it's changed us. This story, which could have gone a thousand different ways, towards a thousand different lows and highs... is our own. And I wouldn't love any one of those Ruby's, even if only a single thing was just barely off. And you wouldn't be able to stand any one of those Weiss's. Because this story, _our _story, is unique. I think it made us for each other..."

Weiss had started to tear up, the drips from her scarred eye curving over the bridge of her nose before joining the other trail of tears and falling off her cheek. "Now, just because I sound all sappy doesn't mean you're just off the hook for the past few years, you hear... I'll still be keeping track, make you start making things up to me..."

"I already was going to..." Ruby whispered, lifting up the sheet in between them and dabbing at Weiss's face.

"But... I'm not going to hold you responsible for that either... because there are parts of those stains on you that are my fault too..."

"...No." Ruby shook her head, the hair around her splaying out across the bed around her.

"It's gonna, g-gonna take a few years..." Weiss mumbled, her voice quivering somewhere between laughter and sobs.

"Years..." Ruby sighed, a smile on her lips at the thought. "I like the sound of a few years..."

"I just don't want us to try and be that old couple we were... both of us more obsessed with making the other think we love them than actually loving them. Because that isn't either of us anymore."

Ruby nodded, her ear rubbing up against the crook of Weiss's elbow. "Okay..."

"So if I want to call you the worst, most gooey, cringe worthy names I can think of, I will... If I feel like showering you with kisses, even if every one of the rest are around, I will. Because," Weiss sighed, her voice getting thick, "I want a break from all that formality. I-I think it can be-"

"Shhhh," Ruby cooed, hushing Weiss. "Alright, I understand... If you want that, then I'll do my best to make this be that..." After Weiss nodded, Ruby added: "...and you know what you said is right. About me loving this you now."

Weiss nodded again, her head rustling against the bed's pillow. Ruby's was just as comfortable, propped up on Weiss's outstretched arm, resting in the crook of the blonde's elbow. "I'm tired Ruby... it's been a good day..."

"Yes, it has," Ruby agreed.

"So... just go to sleep Ruby..." Weiss mumbled, happily sighing and leaning in one last time, her lips barely brushing against the redhead's cheek. "We'll talk in the morning..."

As much as she tried to fight it, Ruby couldn't help but feel her eyelids start to droop, betraying her drowsiness as she mirrored Weiss's own exhaustion. "We aren't done with this conversation, you know..."

Instead of responding, Weiss simply started humming, her notes slow and drawn out. Singing Ruby's old lullaby. Forcing Ruby into dreams before the redhead could do anything to resist. Weiss barely got out the tune, before she herself drifted off to sleep herself.

* * *

Waking up slowly, feeling more alive than she had in years, Ruby's eyes opened up and saw the mid-morning sun above her. Lying flat on her back, the redhead laid there and watched the dust motes swirl in the rays of sunlight above her for a few minutes. Ruby started to sit up to get out of the bed, until she felt something stiffen across her waist.

_'Ah hell...,' _Ruby grumbled happily, as she saw Weiss's arm wrapped around her chest. _'Now how the hell am I gonna get out of here?'_

The blonde, with her hair splayed out behind her, was lying on her side curled up against Ruby. Her arms were both wrapped around the redhead. At some point through the night, Ruby guessed Weiss had shifted and sidled up to her. Somehow turned the taller girl into the little spoon.

_'At least she her hands haven't found each other yet... if they had, there'd be no way to not wake her up...'_

The redhead, being ever so careful, slowly lifted the arm across her torso up and slipped out from under the thin covers over them. It wasn't until she was out from the blankets and standing next to the bed that she actually let go of Weiss's wrist, slowly placing the blonde's arm back down on the mattress top. Watching Weiss, Ruby stayed frozen next to the bed for a few seconds, waiting to see if Weiss would wake up.

She shifted, and for a second Ruby thought she'd been caught. But in the end Weiss just grabbed up more of the blanket, which had covered where the redhead had been lying, and slowly sighed contently.

_'So... she's still a blanket hog...,' _Ruby remarked with a smirk, noticing how Weiss already had three quarters of the quilt they'd been under yanked behind her.

Standing there, looking down at Weiss's face, half hidden under a blanket that came up to her nose, Ruby couldn't help but feel... warm. Not just from the heat of the sun on her back, blistering her skin with pleasant rays of sunlight. But with happiness. This felt... normal. It felt good, to be sneaking off, trying not to wake the girl she'd spent the night with.

_'Now... where did my...' _Ruby started wondering, looking around the room for her own clothes. She wanted to go stretch for a minute, walk around the top floor once or twice before Weiss woke up.

Ruby knew at her core that she wasn't bailing as she searched for clothes. The redhead had every intention of being back long before she could be missed.

Her clothes nowhere to be found, although the errant memory of a red shirt getting flung out a window was hopefully fluttering around through her mind falsely, Ruby gave up on the search. However, it was obvious enough to Ruby from all the knick-knacks and posters still hanging in the room that whoever lived here after her own team had moved out was partially if not entirely female. Other than height differences, hunters generally had similar builds. And Ruby, not being abnormally tall or short, would probably fit some of their leftovers.

Padding away from the bed slowly, a small skip in her step as she walked, Ruby backed away from Weiss and went over to the room's old neglected dresser. As she opened the door, the habits of her memory had Ruby half expecting to see some golds, or maybe a few yellows... to see one of her older sister's crop tops hanging on the top bar. Or maybe a few purple sashes and turtlenecks, one or two old black bows scattered along the cabinet floor.

_'None of Yang's stuff... but at least some of these should fit.' _From the clothes at the bottom of the cabinet, fallen off hangers after all the years of neglect, Ruby sifted through the pile at her feet until she found a few shirts and blouses. Whoever the pieces had belonged to, their wearer looked somewhat close to the size Ruby was now.

_'Whoever this chick was, she had a boner for green and black, that's for sure...,' _Ruby grimaced, holding a shirt up to herself and already imagining the clothing on her. Just how badly would the forest tones clash with her hair?

Without thinking about it, Ruby just threw on a green blouse and a matching pair of track shorts, barely a single shade darker. As she felt the clothing squeeze in on her chest and make it somewhat difficult to breathe, Ruby was forced to rethink the 'somewhat close' statement she'd just made a second earlier.

_'Okay, so maybe they're just a smidge too small... these are more Weiss's size... ugh, I can barely breathe...'_ Stretching the shirt's front and trying to extend the material, Ruby started walking towards the door, hoping Weiss would stay asleep long enough for her to make it back.

Finally stepping out into the hall, holding onto the doorknob and making sure it made no noise as Ruby closed the door behind her, Ruby turned away and slowly started her walk.

The long hall was dark, almost pitch black with the lack of light. If it wasn't for every few dorm rooms a door being open and light spilling through, Ruby would have had to follow along the wall blindly. Although, looking at the sight if in front to her, Ruby almost wished she had been left without the light to see.

It wasn't like the hall was damaged, or that it was dirty or unkempt. But after all these years, it was a sad echo from the grandeur it had once been. In her memory, Ruby could remember sea green walls, ridged with waves and molded perfectly at every seam. There were dark mahogany floors that had been polished to the point where they had nearly sparkled, and the enameling where the walls met the floors and ceiling was so white it would nearly blind you with their brilliance. Every ten feet, there was a small disk of hazy glass flat against the ceiling, hiding strong lights.

The image in front of Ruby was a far cry from those long recalled memories. Now the corridor was worn down, showing the signs of age and neglect they had all experienced. The wallpaper had faded unevenly, in some places the color more akin to shale than the sea, a result of the light from long open doors pounding against walls for years on end. And in certain parts flakes of the textured plaster had started to peel and curl back on itself, revealing the white undercoat it was meant to hide. The floors had lost all their shine, now looking black in the sporadic light. And the lights! While the glass above her remained the same, it was easy enough for Ruby to tell as she looked up that behind each small sheet of glass was a collection of dust mote and other debris to settle over the years.

Shaking her head, Ruby started striding forward into the darkness, trying to care not for the hall she'd entered and more for the one she'd just left.

_'You know,' _Ruby thought, smiling to herself as she turned around a corner and lost sight of the old team RWBY dorm, _'I just realized... Back in the dorm I thought about Yang, and Blake too even, without having one of my chronic depresso attacks... I guess I should be happy about that... although...' _Ruby struggled with the thoughts internally, trying to think of how to express them. _'I, I don't know if I want to move on, all at once with everything...'_

While she walked, Ruby just kept on repeating her sister's name over and over in her head, waiting for her good vibes to ebb and fade away. But they never did, and Ruby was able to think and reflect on her sister in earnest. She could even imagine Yang's smiling face in her mind's eye, without feeling as though a knife was twisting in her heart. There was some sadness with the image for Ruby of course, a sort of hollow throb at the base of her throat. But even with that, Ruby's spirits remained where they were.

_'I... I miss you sis... You'd be happy, I think... to see me, I don't know, not being a total bitch to Weiss...' _Actually gawfing at that point, Ruby chuckled: _'Even though you said you'd break Weiss in two if she ever made me sad, I know you still really cared about her...'_

Ruby would have kept going, follow that trail of thought to wherever its conclusion led her, but as she rounded the corner of another long hallway she was interrupted.

With her brisk pace, Ruby had circled through the halls of dorms all the way around to the opposite side of the building from the old team RWBY room. And as she walked, the redhead could hear the quick pattering of feet against soft wooden flooring as someone began catching up behind her. Someone whose identity was easy enough to peg, with the audible spring to the skip in their step.

"...Hey Nora," Ruby sighed, just as the ginger in question caught up to her in the darkness. Pulling up next to Ruby, matching the redhead's pace and falling in sync with her stride, Nora failed at any attempt at nonchalance as she looked Ruby up and down with wide eyes.

"...So are you going to keep staring all day, or are you gonna just get to asking whatever's on your mind?"

"H-Hey Ruby," was the usually bubbling girl's only reply, with a sort of jittery undertone to her voice that was extremely out of place. "I didn't see you yesterday."

"Hmph," Ruby smirked, in the back of her mind wondering how long they were going to beat around the bush. "Yeah, I slept in pretty late, and then was busy the rest of the day. I _really hope_ it wasn't too much trouble."

"No, no, course not... you weren't missed," Nora mumbled. She seemed to think that what she said had multiple ways of being taken, and she started stuttering: "I-I meant, nobody was looking for you or wondering where you'd disappeared off to. It wasn't like we were glad you weren't around either..."

Ruby smirked at Nora, finding amusement in the girl's floundering. "Good to hear, I'd hate to have Jaune peg me as a slacker... definitely wouldn't want that..."

"So... ummm...," Nora stalled, bouncing down on the tips of her toes.

"Yes...," Ruby slowly drawled, turning another corner, her hand trialing along the cracking wallpaper as she walked. She'd run her hand up and down the wall, leaving waves of dust in her wake. Every once in a while she'd hear the sound of old plaster cracking as her fingers caught on the peeling walls.

"I, well, I checked up to see how you were doing last night, and you weren't in your room." Nora elbowed Ruby at that point, a bit of her edginess starting to fade. "After the waterworks, I wanted to make sure you weren't... weren't, I don't know, in need of a slap or something."

"I was doing pretty well," Ruby smirked, enjoying Nora's returning humor. "You set me straight, got me out of my room and off to see Weiss."

"Oh, um... that's g-good." Nora caught the small tidbit of information that Ruby dropped, although to the redhead's disappointment, after the few seconds of silence that followed it seemed like the usually ADD girl wasn't going to bite today.

"Nora?"

At the call of her name girl in question flinched, jumping so far off the ground that she was momentarily a head taller than Ruby before she came back down. "Yes?"

Without missing a step in her stride, Ruby turned toward Nora and smiled, simply grinning a: "Thank you."

"...uh, you're welcome? I guess?" Not sure at what Ruby was getting that, a little dense this early in the morning; Nora just smiled up at the redhead.

And at that point, they came to Ruby's stop. Weiss's... now her door. "Well Nora, here's where we part ways. You don't mind if I bail and catch up with you a bit later?"

"Uh, what? I, uh... sure?" Nora seemed at a loss, not really comprehending where they'd ended their brief chat at. "But wait a second... what's with the whole green getup?"

"Oh, this? I uh... I guess I lost my clothes last night," Ruby replied, slipping through the door and closing it behind her without any more explanation. Once she was inside Ruby stood by the door and pressed her ear up against the thin wood. The redhead waited there and listened for a few seconds. Until the silence she'd left behind was broken by a short squeal of excited understanding. And followed a half second later by the pounding feet as the ginger took off running down the hall.

_'I wonder how fast gossip spreads when it's only four people,' _Ruby mused, knowing that if they hadn't already guessed, that everyone else would be filled in by Nora the moment she tracked them down.

* * *

_'Hmmm... oh, dust, please just let me sleep in an extra five minutes... I don't want to have to get up yet...,' _Weiss groaned to herself, as she slowly felt herself drift upward out of her nightly splashes of color.

That was how Weiss would describe them... Always so colorful, the small red and blue flashes Weiss could barely recall after her dreams often left her more confused than when she'd been in the midst of them. Waking up slowly, Weiss already couldn't remember much more than a few flashes of rose gardens and floating mountain ranges, the odd images of upside down forests and stalagmite filled deserts dancing behind her closed eyelids.

Lying there on her side, hoping she'd get to return and explore whatever the dream had been further, Weiss tried returning to her sleep. But after a few wasted minutes, where all Weiss was able to accomplish was growing a sense of aggravation at her slowly clearing mind, she had to give up and just wonder if those dreams would ever return to her.

Stretching, Weiss's fingers ran along the bed sheet, skimming the surface of the smooth satin underneath her as she reached out. But instead of running into another body, like she'd been expecting, Weiss's hands eventually curled over the edge of the bed, feeling nothing. All she felt was a pile of extra bedding, clutched up against her.

_'Did she...?'_

Weiss's momentary worry was quickly erased, as a hand caught hers. "Hey...," was the simple reply she got, telling the blonde everything she'd wanted to know. That Ruby was there.

"Hey," Weiss murmured, smiling as she felt the bed rock when Ruby sat down on a corner.

"I wasn't expecting to see you lying in bed, wasting daylight like this." While Weiss hadn't opened her eyes yet, she could just hear the crooked smile on Ruby's face. "What happened to my good ol' up at the crack of dawn with a whistle and schedule partner?"

"I caved her head in with a crowbar a decade ago..." Weiss joked, her still sleepy voice getting a laugh out of Ruby. "It's a perk of having an actual room to myself that I've been enjoying... no stress, worries, or real reason to sleep light..." But, with Ruby's good point, Weiss pushed herself up off the bed and rubbed the crust from her eyes.

"So, are you losing that perk with me around?" Ruby joked: "Maybe I should sleep in the hall... If I stay, you won't have an actual room to yourseeeelllllf..."

"Six of one I guess... there are a few perks for each side," Weiss hummed, actually opening her eyes and looking around her.

For a few seconds, Weiss had to close her eyes to slits, the early morning sunlight that spilled into her room blindingly bright. But after a few seconds she acclimated, and once she got a look around her, Weiss commented on the first thing that came to mind.

"...Green?" In the morning dawn, Ruby was clearly dressed in deep emerald. The shirt was a bit too tight, Weiss could tell by the way the fabric was bunching up at around the middle of the redhead's back, right where the tips of her hair ended and just barely curled up. "Why are you even dressed?"

Ruby just shrugged. "I wanted to go take a walk, couldn't find any of my clothes..." Rolling her shoulders, Ruby turned towards Weiss and grimaced. "I won't be wearing these again. They're more your speed Weiss... I'm a bit too big for them."

"Pfft," Weiss smirked, grimacing at the colors. "Times may be desperate, but even now I wouldn't be caught dead wearing forest green..." Remembering an old phrase she'd herd around the campus back in her youth, Weiss faked her best Mistralian accent and drawled: "I'd rather be caught walk'n round starkers mate, be perfectly honest..."

"Hello Velvet," Ruby sighed, twisting and pulling the shirt off over her head without looking at Weiss. "Good to hear you aren't dead... I guess I _didn't_ see those clickers take a chunk out of your jugular after all..." After a few seconds, Ruby turned towards Weiss and held her hand out with the shirt in it. "Do you know where mine went?"

"Uh... yeah, it was..." Weiss started, vaguely remembering where it'd gotten tossed. Finally Weiss's eyes landed on the back of the dejected radiator, looking neglected and rusted after years of going unused. Thrown haphazardly over the top, half disappearing between the beige painted metal pipes and the burgundy wall behind it was a piece of red fabric, crisscrossed with scattered strands of white.

Nodding to the shirt, Weiss answered: "Yep, over there."

"Thanks..." But instead of moving for the shirt, Ruby just lied down next to Weiss, barely jostling the bed as she flopped down. "So, I wanted to talk to you about something..."

"Shoot." In the back of her mind, Weiss thought: _'Can't be that bad.'_

"Well," Ruby started, rolling her jaw as she thought. "I was thinking of taking a trip. Just off Beacon's campus, towa-"

"NOPE!"

Wide eyed, still with a smirk on her face, Ruby simmered at the blond next to her: "Would you let me finish?"

"Finish what? That you are out of your fucking mind?!" Her voice more incredulous than biting, Weiss cut Ruby off and said: "After everything that has gone on in the past few days, how the hell could you think I'd be up for that?!"

"Weiss, just hear me o-"

"Oh no, there will be no 'hear me out' today!" Rolling forward so she was sitting up straight, Weiss looked down on Ruby, who was still lying on her side against the soft sheets. "Are you drunk? High? ...Both?!"

Rolling her eyes, Ruby just flopped back onto the bed, knitting her fingers together and slipping them behind her head. "Come on Weiss, I've-"

"No!" Standing up, now her entire height above Ruby, Weiss hopped over the redhead and to the floor beside the bed. She winced as she landed, the hard floor cold under her feet somewhat unforgiving after being wrapped in warm covers the entire night. "Aren't you supposed to be the overly protective, safety psycho out of the two of us?!"

Ruby made this sort of annoyed hiss in the back of her throat, more a grumble than anything else really. "I'm just wan-"

"To go through all the stuff we had to deal with to get Nora again," Weiss roared, finishing Ruby's sentence for her. Stalking back and forth in front of Ruby, Weiss tried imagining what the redhead would want so bad as to suggest going _back_ into Beacon for.

"Why the hell would we go back there again on a whim?!" Whirling on Ruby, Weiss pulled her head high and sneered in a mocking copy of Ruby's voice. "Ooooooh, well well and all that, what do I have to fear? I'm an untouchable, badass waste lander who can't get hit by a bullet without making the shooter piss themselves after all. How can she say no? I got myself into Weiss's pants last night, and I'm such a stud that she'll _definitely_ go with anything I have to say, no questions asked..."

"Just when have I ever said 'well well'?" Smirking at Weiss, trying her hardest not to start smiling at the blonde's mini tirade, Ruby started to ask: "Could you let me say-"

"No, you may not 'say' whatever snappy comeback you were going to throw at me!" Stopping her pacing and throwing her arms out to the side, Weiss hissed: "Didn't you tell me Nora said 'she'd be giving hand jobs out' if we hadn't saved her?"

At this point having to actually fight the laugh, the short and feisty woman in front of her doing an ill job at intimidating, Ruby added meekly: "Not to correct you to just correct you, but the quote was about blowjobs actually..."

"OH MY GOD, EVEN BETTER THEN," Weiss exclaimed, her voice singing through two octaves. "And you're the one saying we go out there," the blonde exclaimed, pointing out the window to emphasize her point, "out to exactly where Nora ended up almost giving blowjobs. It's bad enough what happened to her, and not to say Nora isn't pretty, but I am waaaaaay hotter than Nora. Just imagine for a second what would happen to _ME _if we got caught!"

That did it. The wide eyed expression on Weiss's face, as though what she had said was totally obvious. With it Ruby burst out laughing, actually clutching her sides as curled up on her side.

Weiss was caught off guard. On one hand, she was annoyed Ruby wasn't taking her seriously, or that she hadn't been. On the other... she loved the sound. The soft peal, the hidden light raspiness that came from the bottom of the redhead's lungs when she laughed for real.

_'I haven't heard that sound in a good five years...'_

"That," Ruby sighed, whipping away tears from the corners of her eyes, "was the most conceited, self-centered, shallowest thing I've heard you say in quite a long time..."

"Y-yeah... that may be... But still," Weiss started, before Ruby cut in."

"First off, you are absolutely right about that 'badass wastelander' part," Ruby chuckled, swinging her legs off the bed and perching herself on the edge. "And the stud bit too. But...," Ruby hummed, absentmindedly feeling around the indented sun on her chest with the side of her thumb, "you may be a tad off base with the untouchable part... "

"Hmph!" Looking away, Weiss tried to hide the blush on her face, the light pink that she could already feel splashing up across her cheekbones.

"Come 'ere," Ruby sighed, reaching out for Weiss from her spot on the bed.

"Like hell I will," Weiss grumbled, although she didn't step away, and didn't stop Ruby from catching her hand either.

Caught, Ruby slowly reeled the blonde back in, a small twitch pulling her lips up as watched Weiss slowly drift towards her. "First off, if I thought all I'd have to do to get you to do what I want would be to seduce you...," the redhead joked, "I'd have taken off more than just my shirt."

Weiss snapped in aggravation: "And why don't you go put on a shirt then? You know where it is... and you better not start leaving clothes around like a slob, like you would when we were kids!"

Instead of answering, Ruby absentmindedly muttered: "You know, these pants are actually starting to feel a bit tighter..."

Rolling her eyes, although Weiss couldn't fight the blush that lightly tinged her cheeks rouge, she tried ignoring Ruby. "You seem t-"

"...And going back to that _untouchable_ part," Ruby hummed, thinking of what would be best to say on that. Pulling Weiss towards her by their interlocked fingers, Ruby twisted her own so that the back of the blonde's palm was pressed against the sun on the redhead's chest.

"...As we can both see, the phrases 'untouchable' and 'scar coated' are kind of conflicting, aren't they?"

"Hmm...," Weiss sighed, her shoulders sagging. "How about "scar-dusted" then?" Fighting off a smile, still trying to make it seem like she wasn't going to budge, Weiss added: "A bit more romantic to phrase it that way, don't you think?"

"I guess... anyway, you really should let me finish." With a wicked smile, Ruby asked: "Do you even know where I want to go?"

"Does it matter? Like I said before, just because I'm giving us a shot doesn't mean I'm just going to roll over to whatever you want."

Ruby nodded along, listening to Weiss with a look that was so focused the blonde momentarily thought it was meant to be mocking. "True, true...," Ruby agreed with a sigh, although she sounded half sad that she didn't have Weiss dancing on puppet strings. After a second, Ruby looked up at Weiss through wide, silver eyes. And there was a new look in them, another long lost remnant of their past.

A playful glimmer, the shine of a child who was a step ahead on a corny joke.

"I never said I wanted to go _into_ Beacon ... if you'd listened to me, you'd have known I want to head _out_..."

* * *

Weiss couldn't stand to look at Ruby right now. Every time she did, she wanted to roll her eyes. If Weiss kept looking, there was a pretty good chance that they'd up and roll out of her skull.

_'If I have to see that smug, gloating grin on her face one more time, I'll slap it off her...'_

It was almost as if Ruby was psychic. She knew exactly when she shouldn't be talking, and exactly when to ignore that urge.

"See? I told you that if you'd listen to me you'd end up liking what I had to say," Ruby cooed, walking alongside Weiss, the coattails from her red jacket swishing back and forth behind her. After they'd left the old RWBY dorm, they breezed by Ruby's room so that she could change. Now they were both wearing traveling gear. Ruby's heavy boots clunked with each step as they walked side by side down the long hall leading to the front entrance.

Ruby'd convinced Weiss on leaving. But it didn't mean that they were being fools. Namely, in the fact that they were both armed to the teeth, and were still making a stop by the armory even though they were nearly fully stocked on bullets.

With all the weapons strapped to their hips and slung off their shoulders, they didn't feel the need to weigh themselves down any more and bring packs... If everything went well, they wouldn't be gone for more than two or three hours.

"Shut it," Weiss growled irately. "I'm still not too sure about-"

"About what!" Walking along besides Weiss, not entirely surly yet nowhere near as soft as she'd sounded in their room this morning, Ruby exclaimed: "We're heading out towards the perimeter of the city, but still staying far behind the trip wire lines. No clickers, no people, no worries..."

"I guess...," Weiss sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. "But, well... you have to agree that it's a bit frivolous..."

"You haven't wanted to make the trip?" Cocking an eyebrow at Weiss, Ruby muttered: "Cause I'll be honest, it was probably... I don't know, number three on my to-do list after we got set up here."

"I didn't say that, I just said it was dangerous..."

"Actually, _you_ said it was frivolous." Grinning at Weiss, enjoying the scowl that appeared on the shorter girls face, Ruby added: "I haven't heard one hint of the word 'dangerous' in our bickering."

Weiss just kept on glaring, until she eventually turned on a heel and stalked away, disappearing out of sight behind the sliced up oak door a dozen or so feet away from where Ruby stayed standing.

Standing there smiling, Ruby watched Weiss leave. She was so absorbed in Weiss, that she almost missed the footsteps approaching her from behind. _'They always come from behind,' _Ruby mused, turning around just in time to see Mrs. High and Mr. Low walking up.

"Hey guys," Ruby smiled, her hands hidden in her coat pockets. She never knew what to do with her hands, especially while she was talking.

Ren only nodded, barely tilting his head to Ruby, acting as his normal subdued self. Nora, on the other hand, looked like she was about to explode.

"Ruby," Nora started, walking up to the girl in question and grabbing her by both of her shoulders. "You're going to tell me everything."

"Is that an order?" Looking down at Nora, fighting to keep her face plain as she stood there with the shorter woman hanging off her, Ruby replied: "What if it's a letdown?"

"Ruby, you're going to tell me everything!" She gave the redhead a small shake, and added: "Also, good to see you in your colors. Green didn't suit you..."

"Thanks for the compliment… and while I'd love to stay and chat," Ruby muttered, raising a hand and brushing Nora's off, " I actually have a bit of an errand to run." Looking over Nora's head, she made eye contact with Ren and asked: "You okay holding the fort for a few hours?"

"Yes. Pyrrha and Jaune are off watching bells, so it's just us." Ren's face stayed blank as he watched Ruby's reaction to his words, until after a few seconds he finally raised an eyebrow and asked: "Errand?"

"Don't worry," Ruby started, in the back of her mind noticing that Weiss had drifted out of the armory room and to her side. "We'll be careful, back before you can say 'bye'."

"Bye," Ren mumbled, groaning a half second latter at the bad joke he stumbled into.

* * *

"You think they're talking about anything besides us?"

Taking a swing at a rock, nothing more than a small jagged pebble the same color as the faded blacktop beneath their feet really, Ruby shrugged her shoulders. "I honestly doubt it. But hell, what else do they have to do? Play chess for the ten thousandth time? I'd be talking about it too..."

As they went down the street, kicking at rocks and other scraps as they walked, the pair came up to an old chain link fence. "Damn, I forgot this was here... Cut or jump?" Ruby fingered the blade of the knife stuck through her belt loop, imagining how long it would take to get through the thin, rusted strings of brassed metal. With the right tools, Ruby wouldn't have even stopped to ask, she would have just cut her way through. But with nothing more than a hunting knife, it'd take a while to get through.

Weiss looked the fence in front of them up and down, probably thinking the same thing's the woman next to her had. Ruby would have guess Weiss would say to go through, but after a few seconds she sighed and muttered: "... I don't think either of us want to spend the time it'd take to grind a link down... give me a boost."

Hooking her fingers together, Ruby let Weiss step into her hands and lifted the blonde up, to the point where her torso was clear over the top of the fence. Once Weiss was up high enough, Ruby felt Weiss's weight leave her hands, as the blonde shoved her foot into the chain links and climbed over the top.

By the time Weiss was over the fence, Ruby had already started climbing after her. When Weiss hit the ground, Ruby had made it to the top. And as soon as Weiss took a step forward, the sound of the redhead landing lightly echoed through the alley right behind the blonde.

"You sure you haven't lost your semblance?" Grumbling angrily, Weiss sighed: "I don't thinks there's any way you could be that fast unless you lied to me for the few years…"

"Pfft, as if. You know I'm too quick for y-"

Suddenly, off maybe ten or so feet in front of them, both Ruby and Weiss heard a noise that ended their banter. It startled Weiss, and shot cold, sharp daggers of fear through Ruby.

A soft, muffled sneeze.

Both of their arms snapped up, a rifle in one set and a pistol held up in the other respectably. Ruby stepped in front of Weiss, her feet carrying her forward without even noticing the motion.

"I won't even think about blowing your head off," Ruby growled, edging more and more in front of Weiss. The sniffle had come from up on her right, just passed a corner down the alleyway. The gap was actually a bit of an optical illusion, and Ruby probably wouldn't have seen the gap between this building and the next until she passed it.

There were a few seconds of silence, where a bystander would have heard a pin drop if they'd listened. The only sound in the entire alley way was the sound of Ruby's hollow, shaky breathing. And maybe her heart pounding, although the redhead wasn't sure if it was only blaringly loud in her own ears or in Weiss's as well.

Breaking the silence was the sound of rustling fabric, from the same place where the sniffle had come from. As if the figure was pushing itself off a wall, and turning around the corner on light feet.

Around the corner the person turned, their dull eyes suddenly widening to total shock. Out of stunned recognition.

Ruby and Weiss were both just as surprised, and it took a couple of seconds for either of them to make a sound. Finally, Ruby was able to break the silence.

"...Sun?!"

* * *

**Pretty fluffy chapter in my opinion… hope you all liked it. Alright, first authors note in a while... I've got a lot to say again.**

**If you take anything away from what I have to say here, in all of this, I just want to say thank you. In the most sincere way I can make strokes on a keyboard convey my feelings, thank you. For all the new followers, and all my old ones as well. To everybody who's pushed me forward and given me that bit of extra drive to keep on going with this story. I remember I used to sit around and look at the metrics on the planning page, and say to myself**

**And it's not like it just blindsided me now. I've been noticing the numbers rising all this time, and pretty much explode in the last two months. But I liked this idea of the stoic and nonchalant writer who just shrugs off his small successes and keeps on marching. While in reality, every time I refresh my mailbox and see "Joe Shmoe has favorited..." I have to keep myself from getting too excited in the middle of one of my classes.**

**So thank you for all that. It's really, really cool.**

**And now to where I become a downer...**

**Sorry for this chapter taking so long to come out. I had issues with this piece, I scrapped it twice, and even after all of that I had to take a long time ironing them out of this one until I wasn't too bothered. And now I'm working out kinks in the next chapter. That, plus me finally getting my hands on Bloodborne (which I have some heated opinions on) really slowed me down.**

**No promises, because I will never put out a chapter before I think it's ready, but I'm gonna try to speed up. Now that the semester is winding down to an end, I have more time to myself. Which will hopefully mean more time to actually write out the chapters in fewer sittings.**

**Criticism always helps, if you have opinions I'd really like to hear them.**

**So, I'll see you around! Stop by again soon!**


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